


Fair Game

by argus



Series: The Violence in Small Mercies [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Development, Complete, Divided priorities, Dreamscapes, Explicit Sexual Content, Introspection, Loki Whump, M/M, Magic, Minor Character Death, Not Safe Sane and Consensual, Not exactly non-con, Pining Loki (Marvel), Science, Semi-Public Sex, Slow Burn, Tattoos, Unreliable Narrator, Whump, Whumptober, author slips into nihilism here and there, chronic underestimation, gammafrost - Freeform, quid pro quo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:02:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 27
Words: 67,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21538675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argus/pseuds/argus
Summary: Events deviate from Thor 3.  Loki and Bruce have been separated, brutally.Loki has one priority in mind now, and that's finding Bruce and settling the score.AKA: the one with Samara the scrapper, magic tattoos, lots of introspection and Loki's distorted view of reality."Try that novelty on me, Idareyou."  Loki sneered at the creature disguised as a man."Oh, feisty!  I like that."  He turned to the woman.  "What do you think, Topaz?  Should we keep him?"
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Loki, En Dwi Gast | Grandmaster/Loki
Series: The Violence in Small Mercies [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1552288
Comments: 20
Kudos: 73





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FelliSkelli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FelliSkelli/gifts), [NebulaReads](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NebulaReads/gifts), [straymuffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/straymuffin/gifts), [BellamyBelladonna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BellamyBelladonna/gifts).



He was trapped. The skies above were dark, ethereal. They boiled with malice and spiteful energy. Under him the ground melted into quicksand. The whole world: slate grey.

Cold sucking mud lapped at his knees. Lightning and thunder lashed the sky overhead. The horizon was limitless, nothing but shifting sands as far as the eye could see.

Despair condensed in his abdomen. There was no escape.

***

  
It was true, what they said. Time healed all wounds. Or at least, it took the sting away. 

No, that wasn't correct. His wounds weren't healed, not by a long shot. The cavern in Loki's chest that the Norns had only recently carved had, at the very least, stopped gushing the crimson blood of his anguish and despair. The flesh of his soul had regrown, the fire of violent loss had dissipated to a sting. But the scar was still there. And he was still angry. But his anger was different this time.

The wound throbbed on long nights when everyone else in Asgard had retired to their quarters, when the day's endless line of vapid courtiers and frivolous petitions drew to a close. When he was finally alone in his chambers, then... then it _ached_. It was then that he set to work trying to determine a way to unravel his fate. A way to find what was lost, banished. A way to reignite the connection he'd forged with his Midgardian scientist, to amplify it, to defy the unfathomable distances and forces separating him from the mortal enemy who'd evolved into the unlikely locus of his affections. 

In the still of night, when Loki was utterly alone and safe from judgement, he clutched his arms to each other and pretended they were still filled by that warm mortal body. A body that was frail and unbreakable simultaneously. Vulnerable and invincible at the same time. He dreamed of laughing brown eyes and sharp wit and soft curls and pliant lips and tremulous gasps. Once or twice, there were dried remnants of tears in his eyes when he woke. Those nights didn't bear remembering. Each morning when the light spilled over Asgard, he was angrier and more determined than the last.

Time eased the pain but it did not heal.

Loki had found he was playing the fool, precisely as the horrible Norns had cursed him. Odin slept, Thor was free, and he alone was left to guard the throne. It turned out to be a burden, not a blessing as he'd always imagined. No Aesir would accept him as their king in his true Jotun form or in his adopted Asgardian visage. The Trickster had burnt too many bridges. Well, actually there was one Asgardian who would fall in line for him, but only one. Loki and Skurge were conspirators now. 

No, it was best for all that Loki donned the form of his erstwhile father instead of claiming the throne himself. Each day, wearing Odin's face, he did his utmost to bridge the line between wise, gracious equanimity and unpredictable, flippant judgement. 

Honestly? Not all of it was a burden. He needed to have a little fun, after all. 

He fired Heimdahl straight away. The man could see cleanly through Loki's disguise and he was constantly suspicious, unrelenting. He threw their many disagreements as heated acid in Loki's face.

No, rather than be constantly second-guessed, he disavowed Heimdahl and gathered a small, newly elevated, swiftly loyal coterie of dukes and duchesses around him. He didn't have any aim or objective in his actions. He simply filled the glided seat until his punishment was at an end. However: knowing Thor, knowing Odin, and worst, knowing the Norns he didn't expect to be relieved of his duty anytime soon. No, those foul, vengeful creatures would ensure his ironic purgatory would be never-ending.

Who knew the crown would be such an odiferous burden?

***

He had to assume that Banner was still alive. The Norns had only threatened to banish the mortal, after all. They didn't take his life. Loki refused to believe that any other more horrific fate had befallen the man.

Sometimes, he tricked himself into thinking their connection was still active. The blood bond he'd made without Banner's consent all those months ago. Or was it years? It was impossible to tell how Midgardian time flowed without a lodestone to keep him centered. 

It was all easier in the faint dawn, on the edge between a pleasant dream and bitter reality. When the memory of their stolen afternoon beside the pond was still thick and viscous. Then, it wasn't a challenge to remember the way the skin between Banner's eyebrows creased when he was tiptoeing through a verbal landscape of Loki's own creation. Or the way the muscles on his forehead, his jawline, went slack when he finally let go and gave in to the demigod. Hel, even his little tics: licking his own lips, fidgeting with his glasses. All the small things Loki hadn't been conscious of before were now painfully so in the doctor's absence.

Loki imagined, if he pretended hard enough, that he could still feel his own blood fizz like it did when he first took Banner's into his veins. On the last fateful day they had shared. It was an alien burning feeling. Perhaps it was related to the gamma radiation that the scientist had subjected himself to in his halcyon days? Maybe it was all in Loki's head.

If he allowed the merciful delusion to persist, he imagined he could use the connection. Maybe all was not lost. 

Maybe. 

What a lovely word. Loki used small snippets of time in the days, his evenings, even the space between his dreams, to think of ways to exploit the phantom connection. To locate Banner, determine his fate, to track him down. The Norns had banished him from Yggdrasil, but there were unknown realms beyond, certainly. Loki knew there were methods, old and ancient, to divine the location of lost objects. To tether souls together. But they were separate crafts, the magic as different as sun and shadow. And Loki had never mastered either of them. He endeavored to now.

He poured over old tomes until his eyes watered with dust and his lids grew heavy. But what was this small strain to a god? His lost sleep and scholarship was a minuscule price to pay to find Banner.

Banner. No: Bruce. The mortal who defied all odds and wound his way into Loki's cold desolate heart. He forbid himself from dwelling now over their few stolen moments together. Those hours they had passed. Some idly, some anything but. His blood frothed to think of the tenuous acceptance and empathy they'd found in each other's arms. And how brutally it was ripped away.

Monsters weren't allowed to have peace.

***

He strode down to his adoptive father's treasure rooms some nights, trailing his fingers over the myriad objects of power. Loki no longer had to sneak around. He was wearing Odin's face after all. The weaponry of Asgard was at his fingertips. But what to use to effect Bruce's search and rescue? There was the Casket of Ancient Winters, and Surtur's crown. Brunnhilde's wedding veil and the blood of Ymir. Dew from the leaves of Yggdrasil and the only egg that Nidhoggr ever laid.

But what could any of it actually do that brought him closer to his goal? He pocketed a few, just to feel the warmth their power gathered against his thigh. If Loki was honest with himself, it simply wasn't enough to have the pilfered throne of Asgard under his feet. The objects in his hands made him feel slightly more secure.

But despite his distractions, there was no Bruce or quailing hope by his side. That was the epitome of his distress. And it was slowly turning him grey. He found a few pale strands in his obsidian hair one morning before donning the visage of the great elder king. When had he started to grey? Jotun and Aesir alike both aged so slowly. His 5000 years of life was far too young to show such obvious signs of age. He fingered the strands curiously, but ultimately wrote them off as some minor irritant.

Oh, but he _missed_ the infuriating mortal. He really did. It ached in his chest to have someone intelligent to talk to. To play and toy with. Someone warm and worthy to hold. Someone who thought him worthy as well, despite his million failings. A soul who'd bled and suffered the same as he had. The best he had now were Odin's ravens to debate with and Skurge to kick whenever the impulse arose. All other beings were as skittering cockroaches in his eyes. 

He wove spells of divination from his mother's scrolls, from the old tomes. To make them stick, he chanted them night after night. Over and over. In high tones and deep guttural murmurs. And when that didn't feel like it was enough, he inked the spells into his skin. Ancient words, pleading and threatening, tattooed into his flesh. The black lines contrasted with his pale skin and wound around his wrists, his arms, over his shoulders, across his thighs until he stared at himself in the mirror and found he'd gone quite mad. Excepting his face, his skin was a book of spells, circular and endless as they wrapped around his limbs.

The power and the potency of what he'd done filled his lungs and made his blood race. But it did not ignite his and Bruce's connection and it brought him no closer to his aim.

***


	2. Chapter 2

  
As swiftly as Loki's ironic punishment on the throne had begun, it came to an end. Thor returned, and saw through his flimsy disguise, and hauled him back to Midgard. Together and in the span of a few dizzying minutes, they pulled Odin out of the Odinsleep and then lost him. He was gone. Dead. _Forever._ Loki's entire world was set on its head.

Odin... loved him? He called him his son? Why?

Why? Why _only_ at the end?! Why right before he dissolved back into the universe that had birthed him? Why in his very last breath?! If that sentiment was always in Odin's prideful, treacherous heart, _by Bor_ why didn't he make it plain earlier?! If his words were true, then all Loki's grief and rage and regret was for _nothing_. Like children's castles knocked to the ground. Like the lace of windowpane frost, melted away in the feeble light of morn. 

It could have all been avoided! And if through Odin's guilt or fear, that sentiment had only blossomed at the end, while the eternal king of Asgard was finally facing his own doom, then _why_ say anything at all? Why fabricate such a cruel lie at the very end of his life? 

It was meaningless! It was infuriating! Loki's rage gave him familiar ground to stand on. 

As for the pleasant lie? True or not, Odin's words gave him some solace, despite himself. _Was_ he loved? Was he a worthy son after all? 

Oh, Loki was weak, and he knew it. And when his adopted half-sister Hela appeared, entirely unannounced and very uncouth, his head was such a chaos of emotions that he was slow to react. His decisions that followed were so reactive and predictable. Thor was on his game, amazingly. But Loki couldn't shield himself well enough from Hela's verbal barbs and sharp strategy. Doubtless she'd been whetting her purpose to a fine edge for several thousand years. 

Loki called to Skurge and down the Bifrost came. Hela leapt into the slipstream and followed them like a dancer hearing a favorite melody. He'd never seen anyone do that. She defied all expectations. She caught him by the ankles and knocked him about like a ragdoll toy. Her strength fractured the rainbow conduit ferrying them back to Asgard and Loki flew through the void in a totally random vector, bewildered and disoriented and powerless to stop it.

***

The next thing he was aware of was blue skies and a hard landing on an unforgiving pile of detritus. He picked himself up, immediately on edge by the racing of his blood and Hela's attack and the turmoil of Odin's death. 

The landscape was nothing but an entropy of broken objects. The sky opened at random locations. Waterfalls of discarded junk perpetually fell from the clouds. It was the craziest planet he'd ever seen and he couldn't place it in his long journal of exploits. Where was he? He called up to the heavens to Skurge, but there was only silence answering him. He tried again and again, but there was no reply. Was he too far for the oculus of the gate to see him? Doubtful. Even without Heimdahl its range was unparalleled. 

Then, had something happened in Asgard? Thor and Hela? But so little time had passed at all. The only answer was incompetence. He made a note to fire Skurge too when he returned.

In the meantime, Loki began walking towards the only settlement he could see, tall metal buildings which brushed the clouds, massive slums spreading, grovelling at their base. 

It wasn't long before he grew bored by the slog. But his wish for diversion didn't appear in the guise he hoped. A band of scraggly trash dwellers began to appear out of the landscape like mushrooms after rain. One by one they popped up until he was completely surrounded. 

Well, then. Wasn't offense the best defense? He addressed them as one.

"I assume if you are gathering, then you've come to deliver the bounty I posted?" His odd statement caught a good number of the miscreants off guard. It became apparent who the leader was when he spoke, shrugging off Loki's confusing and derisive remarks.  
"Bounty? There's no _bounty_ I know of. Well, other than the fine prize standing right there." He leveled the point of his rusty cutlass at Loki. "I bet you'd bring a nice bit o' coin."

There were teeth missing in the man's acidic smile. It was the leer of a hungry dog, ready to devour his own children if it meant a meal. His dark hair was patchy in spots and his armor worn and dirty excepting a few choice pieces which shone with careful care.

Loki laughed the paltry threat off as best he could, which was nearly flawlessly.  
"Are you blind? I'm the one that posts the rewards." He climbed to the top of a pile of rubbish in order to address them better and increase his strategic advantage. "You ignorant lot. You are standing in the presence of the king of Asgard. I'll forgive you your egregious tone, but demand that you kneel."

"Asgard? Seems like a funny made up name. Never heard of it... your _'highness'_ ," the man mocked, taking a daring step forward. The others joined in at his prompting, laughing in a monotone vacant manner. In a way, Loki was worried about the potential of their combined strength. But he was also eager for a fight, untested over these long months sitting idle on the throne. And before that, the time spent with Bruce, his time in the dungeons, all bereft of combat. Mere minutes ago, Hela had swept the rug so comprehensively out from under his feet. He had been unilaterally outmatched against her and it made his hands shake with rage. But no need to think on that now. This fight had been a long time coming, and his fingers itched with the desire to draw blood. As they verbally spared, Loki wove a sightless net of raw power between their legs, like a great lasso floating on the air, waiting for his command.

"Then you are clearly more ignorant than I anticipated. But it does not excuse you of your _requirement. to. kneel._ " The words were forced through clenched teeth. Loki was begging them to attack and let it be over with. The leader raised his cutlass and started to advance. Loki pulled on the current of power encircling their legs. They toppled over like toy soldiers.

"I told you to kneel," he leered with pitiless delight.  
"Get up, get him!" the man bellowed and one by one they rose and charged. Loki balled his fists and felt the power flow through his core and over his tattooed skin. He channeled energy between his fingers, hurling it like heat-seeking stones at his opponents. Each salvo made its mark and knocked them off their feet, leaving them slow to recover. But there were too many of them and he was not quick enough with his ranged attacks. The first few creatures closed on him and he conjured a spear, parrying their thrusts and spinning one into the other where they stumbled. Those who were too slow were impaled on his blade. Those swift enough struck back but Loki dodged like lightning cutting through the rain of swords.

He abandoned the spear for his favorite throwing knives. These found several homes in several skulls. The rank and file of his opponents were dwindling, but he was running out of steam. And the ringleader still remained, holding back and biding his time.

Loki called his inner core of cold and ice spiked up from the ground where the few attackers remained, slicing them from loins to throats. They had shown him no mercy, so why should he? No, their variously-colored blood oozed over the ice where they twitched, slowly dying. It was a novel sight.

"I won't ask again," he spun around to address the leader. "On your knees." But there was no surrender in the leader's eyes. He tossed a knife at Loki's torso and quickly after it another smaller object. Loki was _nearly_ not fast enough. Nearly. The blade was knocked aside and the object caught between his deft fingers.

"What manner of weapon is this?" He used his magic to quickly advance on his prey, holding the device in his attacker's face, his other hand around the man's throat.  
"A-a-a obedience disk," he stammered out, his eyes growing wide. He had not anticipated that Loki would be able to withstand his troupe's onslaught.   
"And what does it do?" He spoke in slow, soft tones as you would address a small child who needed to be punished.  
"I-i-it shocks you and lets you get captured." It was clear the man didn't have a powerful grasp on its inner workings. He was just a foot solider, after all.  
"Very well. Show me how it works, or I will pull your entrails through your nostrils." He flashed his best benevolently crazed smile at the man and nodded at him to proceed, hopeful he would obey, but also hopeful that he would simply soil himself in fear. By Bor, this _was fun_.

But instead, despite the tremble in his fingers, the man took the device from Loki's hands and placed it on his own neck obediently. He pressed a big rectangular button on a bigger and more rectangular remote in his hands. His legs buckled instantly and he fell to the ground, convulsing.

Hmmm. That was interesting indeed.

"Excellent. Then I assume that your intention was to take me to that tall group of towers, deposit me at someone's tenuous mercy, and collect your reward." Loki shook his head in a mockery of concern. "I shan't keep you from your destination. What say we go together?" He smiled broadly, wickedly, picked up the remote and lifted the prone man from the ground with a whisper of magic. He walked through the bodies scattered in the omnipresent litter, his floating cargo in tow. 

It would only make sense to see what type of horrible backwards barbaric society he'd fallen into. With one of their sergeants in bondage, Loki had the perfect entrance and a fine bargaining chip.

And if all Hel broke loose, he would gladly deal with the violent consequences.

***


	3. Chapter 3

At first, the inhabitants of this exotic realm faced Loki and his floating captive with fear and reservation, scrambling away when he approached. Oh, he _liked_ that. The deference was gratifying. Every dozen paces or so, his thumb caressed the rectangular button on the obedience remote, and the man behind him groaned, shaking from the pain. 

Good fun.

But as Loki and his cargo drew closer to the tall buildings, a few figures grew bolder. Some were even menacing.  
"Trade your burden for some coin? We'll take him off your hands." _No_.  
"Where do you think you're going? This area is under our control." _Hilarious_.  
"What are you trying to pull? You can't transport a prisoner without a permit." _Indeed? Here's my permit._

The salvos were easily fended off, but Loki knew he'd reached the end of the line when he strode to the base of one massive building and guards leapt to their feet, spears sharp and eager in their hands. One, whom he assumed was a woman, squared herself straight into his line of approach, cutting him off. She was clad in metal armor, her hair slicked back, jaw wide and firmly set.

"Drop your captive and state your name."  
"I am Loki, _king_ of Asgard, and I will not relinquish my prisoner until I have met the being who controls this place." Her lips twitched in the ghost of a smile. Loki slowly twirled the now-catatonic man in the air as he spoke. As if he were a boar impaled on a spit.  
"Never heard of it. Your title doesn't matter here, _your majesty_. You are quite close to hazarding a charge of trespass on the Grandmaster's citadel, and that charge is punishable by death in the Fighting Ring."   
"Really? I'd heard differently. I heard you traded in flesh and the only rule was the strongest shall prevail. I bring a bounty. And I intend to deliver him to this 'Grandmaster' directly." The man had rotated now so that his face was beaming stupidly at the sky. The warrior woman caught a glimpse of him and did a double-take.

"Scrapper 93?" She addressed Loki again. " _He's_ your captive?" Her incredulity quickly turned to the driest humor. "Oh, _please_ , take him on to the Grandmaster. I want to see how quickly he kills you." She stood aside and waved at the spear-bearing guards to stand at ease. That was odd. And it didn't bode well. 

"Thank you," Loki inclined his chin in false, affected gratitude before striding ahead without a glance to his left or right. He walked ahead haughtily, but was on guard as the dirt under his feet changed to polished metal and he and his captive were escorted inside the building. The massive door shut behind Loki with an ominous clang.

Inside, the building was a chaos of different colors and shapes emblazoned on base metal walls and ceilings. It was red, now green, now black, changing to yellow checkered patterns. The decor made no sense and it looked as though the designer was either mad or thrifty, having constructed this monolith of a building out of any materials that were readily at hand.

But it all flowed together in a semblance of a theme and Loki couldn't help but be drawn, confused, to admire the spastic architecture. It was unlike Asgard, entirely. But also different from Jotunheim, Midgard, Niflheim, and every other realm he'd traveled.

Honestly, it was a glorified trash heap of a building. But it seemed to be the nexus of power here. The risk brought him closer to danger but also closer to finding a way back to Thor and Hela. As he walked, escorted by the stoutly muscled woman, the hallways slowly populated. The inhabitants were unalike to other races and to each other. Discarded remnants of a thousand worlds, all congregating in one place. It was odd to a degree he couldn't quite identify. The languages, some identifiable through the All Speak and others entirely unintelligible. He was clearly out of his element.

His captive, floating by magic, tied to him through an invisible tether, garnered stares and whispers and general shock. _Who_ exactly had accosted him in the wasteland? Who was this 'Scrapper 93'? It was such an innocuous name, but perhaps there was a reputation associated with the semi-anonymous moniker.

They entered a lift and climbed dozens of floors. There were no windows, no indication of height and no opportunity for Loki to review the landscape around him. When the doors opened, it was onto floors polished like glass, repelling any molecule of dirt. There was a soft hush, no voices. The air was sweetly perfumed. Undoubtedly, this was the Grandmaster's floor. 

The woman strode out of the elevator first and he cursed his internal hesitation. Kings didn't hesitate, they _took_. He followed regrettably, the bounty hunter still floating in tow. They approached a tall figure, his back turned, gesticulating wildly, engaged in a one-sided conversation with some cowering creature.

Loki locked eyes with the small blue lizard creature and the tall man stopped talking, sensing their approach. He turned and Loki failed to place his like anywhere within his vast catalog of experience. The Grandmaster's white hair was spiked in odd places, blue streaking his face, cape and costume presumably the height of fashion on this ash-pit realm. 

"Topaz, I'm kind of in the middle of a negotiation, here." The blue lizard, freed from the man's intense focus, scurried away. "Oh, _lovely_ , now I've lost the little buzzard. What's up?" His impatience was palpable.  
"Sir, we have a trespasser who 'demands' your presence. And he's captured one of ours." Her joy in presenting Loki in the worst light possible was effusive. The tall man's eyes flicked over to Loki and he found himself pinned for a moment, unable to react. Was it the strangeness of this man? Was it Loki's failure to assess his threat level? Or was it something else?

"Grandmaster, I presume? I am Loki, king of Asgard. Your _pirate_ here," he gestured at the levitating captive, "attempted to accost me. I dealt with him and his gang easily enough. And now I am here for what I assume is the reward he would have demanded for _me_." He gestured at himself with a grand sweep of his arm, but his posturing was quickly disassembled. The Grandmaster laughed lightly.

"Sorry, king of where? Ass-guard? Never heard of it. But-but you should know," he crossed the room to grab a ridiculous looking staff. "It doesn't matter where you come from. You're on _Sakaar_ now, where all lost and unloved things gather. This is the end of the line, bud. You're not a king anymore." Grandmaster's smile was caustic, self-amused. Loki scoffed lightly, his eyes narrowing. He didn't like the implication one bit. And he had to figure out this man's game before he was beaten at it.

He turned to Loki's captive.  
"Scrapper 93?!" His eyes grew wide. " _Oh_ , I'm disappointed. You got yourself captured. And by a rookie, no less." He sighed, twirling the staff in his hands languidly. "Well, I guess we all get old eventually." He coughed, laughing. "Oh, well, I guess all of us _except me_ , of course. Ha." The Grandmaster brandished the staff at the man's head and though his body was rigid, Loki could see his captive sweat in fear. It beaded on his forehead and ran down his neck.

"Seems like the merciful thing to do is give you an early retirement. You're not going to embarrass me. Again." And with those menacing words, the Grandmaster touched the end of his staff to the man's head. A great plume of smoke curled into the air, and his flesh melted into pungent ooze. In the space of half a minute, Scrapper 93 was rendered into a puddle of gore.

"Ew, ick," the man commented benignly on the outcome of his own violence. "Topaz, get the grubs to clean that up." To no one in particular, he sighed, "what a waste of a good bounty hunter." Then he trained his merciless eyes on Loki. "Well, your _majesty_ , now we come to you." Despite himself, the demi-god felt a chill race down his spine. Who exactly was he dealing with? 

"Try that novelty on me, I _dare_ you." Loki sneered at the creature disguised as a man.   
"Oh, feisty! I like that." He turned to the woman. "What do you think, Topaz? Should we keep him?"  
"He's a liar and a _fiend_. I say we melt him before he turns on us."  
"Oooh, ouch! We'll do no such thing." He turned back to Loki. "At least not yet." His eyes slitted and a snake smile crept across his features. "You have a choice, your highness. Serve in my household or become one of the hunted. I assume you've seen what it's like out there," he gestured at non-existent windows. "You can slum it with the plebs or you can swallow your massive, um," he glanced Loki up and down with a slow lascivious stare, "...pride. And live here. In the lap of luxury." 

What an odd choice. Loki was continually befuddled by the man. Did he mean to attack Loki with his alien weaponry? Or turn him into an glorified slave? Or ingratiate him into his queer version of court? Loki's eyes narrowed in kind, trying to pick apart the creature that stood before him. He was either unpracticed or he'd met a wholly new type of being. 

"It's a gracious offer, and one that any traveler would be loath to decline." He brushed some non-existent dust particles from his armored shoulders. "I shall accept, but on one condition."  
"Name it, Chuckles."   
"I am your _guest_ , not your prisoner, and I shall stay or leave at my own whim. Let's agree to that now and not forget it later." He plastered a pleasant smile across his face, needing the Grandmaster to see both his good manners and his veiled threat simultaneously.  
"Deal." Loki found himself oddly squirming under the man's gaze, which only intensified now that he'd apparently gotten what he wanted. "Topaz, show his majesty to his new rooms. I'm sure he's tired from his journey. Floor 501, the corner facing Beelzebub's Butt?"  
"Yes, _sir_ ," she grunted derisively. And to Loki, "come on, you little twat," before striding as quickly as her short frame allowed to the elevators.

***

Loki was grateful to be out of the Grandmaster's presence. He was clearly after something, but with the strangeness of his realm, Loki was thrown off the scent, unable to divine it. But he knew he would have to solve the puzzle swiftly in order to get off this world intact.

The elevator took them downwards, but not far. Topaz was muttering to herself as she led Loki along the corridors, lit with bright but indirect light.  
"I'm sorry, these royal ears are a little deaf. Be a dear and speak up?" he spat with barely veiled venom.  
"I said: be careful how you tread, newcomer. You may have found the Grandmaster's favor for now, but I _know_ him. He's fickle and you will not remain his new toy for long." Despite his blind spot for Grandmaster, Loki could read Topaz like a book.  
"Jealously does not become you. Be a dear and give us a smile." Loki's own grin was like cut glass. "You'll look so much prettier."

With one quick, practiced movement, she jabbed her fist into Loki's gut. He doubled over in surprise and shock, but laughed it off breathlessly.  
"Oh, I think we're going to be the _best_ of friends, Topaz dear."  
"Enjoy your room, _slave_." She spat the words at him and jabbed a button that was flush with the rest of the wall. A door slid open and she turned, marching down the hallway without a glance back.

***


	4. Chapter 4

  
A knock at Loki's door revealed a small blue creature, not unlike the one that he'd seen the Grandmaster yelling at earlier.  
"His peerless eminence... requests your presence... for dinner," a squeaky voice proclaimed. The statement was not wholly unexpected. It was unlikely Loki's strange host would leave him alone to his own devices for an entire day.

Loki had settled into his rooms easily, like a weary traveler in desperate need of respite, even though he had not traveled long and the distance separating this hovel from Midgard was nigh immeasurable. Perhaps it was the events that had occurred in the previous short span of time that had wrung him out. Thor arriving, Odin dying, Hela attacking. And Odin's last words. They cut him to his core, even though he didn't want to admit it. He forced himself to banish his musings away to a cold, dark corner of his mind where all the wounds he'd suffered resided en masse. He'd shelve today's events right alongside the cupboard where he kept Bruce. The ragged incision of the mortal's violent banishment. His pungent, nauseous absence.

Yes, Loki was weary. The magnificent view from his rooms did nothing to balm his soul. It was expansive and impressive, truly. Perhaps one of the best views in the tower. His gaze could stretch for miles and miles along the curvature of this world. 

But it was so foreign. It only reminded him of his utter isolation from everything he knew. The old Loki would have loved it. Chaos and rubble everywhere the eye gazed. A massive chasm in the sky enveloped the center of his horizon, larger than all the rest. It swirled like ancient, angry Charybdis. But rather than sucking sailors beneath the waves, it was vomiting them out, endlessly. Bits and pieces of a million other worlds fell from the heavens like rancid manna, flooding the landscape and doubtless fueling the desperate scrabble that fevered these people. To take, and steal, and murder, and enslave. He'd glimpsed only a silver of it in his trek through the town, but its pervasiveness was repulsive. 

Desperation. That was the only word for it.

He magicked a Midgardian suit to his form, onyx and sleek. It felt almost like battle armor, though satin and smooth. He breathed easier clad as he was and followed the stumbling blue servant down the corridors, into and out of the elevators, and into the sweet air that surrounded the Grandmaster.

"Ass-guard! So good of you to accept my invite." A polygonal chalice of liquor appeared at Loki's elbow, offered by another blue creature. "Come, sit. I bet you're starving." The Grandmaster exuded velvet charm. The dining area was expansive but intimate, low tables encircled with technicolor cushions. Crystalline lights were enchanted to float on the air, brightening the whole space. Loki was the sole dinner guest. A pack of small servants dashed from one task to another wordlessly. Practiced. _Frightened_.

"Grandmaster. My gratitude for the rooms and your hospitality. I am a stranger in a strange land, surely." He started with graciousness. It was not a poor footing to build from, after all.  
"Nonsense, it's simply how I treat regal guests. Guests with _taste_. With charm, and charisma, and sophistication. Nice threads, by the by." The Grandmaster's eyes licked up and down Loki's form as he sat and suddenly the sorcerer's hackles were raised, on guard. A cold shiver darted down his spine.

"I follow no conventions when I dine. Does that bother you?" Grandmaster asked, picking up a spoon and tasting some strange blossom-pink substance that looked half-confection, half-meat pie.  
"Not at all. Every court has its own customs. I've dined with giant chitinous creatures who insisted on no utensils and no hands either. Quite a mess, I assure you." The Grandmaster laughed, head tossed back. Yes, Loki was pouring on the charm. It was one of his strengths.

"Ha. You have to show me later, I think the demonstration would be ten times better than my imagination." His eyes sparkled and his immaculate teeth glinted, dangerous and inviting simultaneously.

Loki had to get on an even ground with this man. Was he a magician? A titan? A demon? What strengths and subtleties did he possess? There was no way Loki could feel at ease until he'd read him like a textbook. And he hadn't forgotten the power of the staff he'd seen him wield earlier, which had rendered a favored bounty hunter into a substance that looked quite like the pink confection on his plate. He pushed it away, his appetite suddenly lost.

However, the rest of the meal went more smoothly than Loki could have imagined other than the sidelong, lingering glances that were lobbed his way. It was clear that the self-styled god had an interest in Loki, but how far it went and what his aims were... It was unfathomable. If they had been on Asgard, or another familiar realm, Loki would have been able to pierce the miasma like a razor blade. But here? On Sakaar? Perhaps he was trying to divine how the demi-god would taste, filleted and sauteed. Those glances could have meant a million different things. 

When dinner was concluded a great tray of what appeared to be fruits were set before them. Grandmaster pushed back from the low table and lounged on one crooked arm. His long body was halfway under the table and he simply lounged without a care. Like the deity he thought he was.

"But why fret over your half-brother and sister, now? There's no way to escape from Sakaar. I mentioned it earlier." Loki had provided his host with an abbreviated and glorified version of recent events.  
"No way at all?" Loki arched one eyebrow skeptically. He did not tolerate absolutes.  
"None. No creature has ever escaped from my realm."  
"Could _you?_ " That earned him a wide smile and eyes that sparkled like sapphires.  
"Wouldn't you like to know," was all the god would admit. Grandmaster plucked a small spherical fruit from a vine and played with it in his fingers, watching the bright light reflect and refract off its smooth, moist surface. "There may be a way. But the price of those secrets doesn't come cheap." He leveled a meaningful glance at Loki and then offered him the plucked fruit.

Unsurprising. The best knowledge was never free. Or easy. And until he obtained it, he was effectively a prisoner, no matter his treatment. Loki narrowed his eyes knowingly and reached out for the grape-like fruit, but Grandmaster pulled it away.  
"Ah, ah, ah," he chided, smiling and slick. Loki withdrew his hand and the Grandmaster offered the fruit anew. Loki reached out again, but Grandmaster pulled away once more.

"Not _quite_ ," he explained, insinuating several things that Loki was certain he would not entertain.  
"What game are we playing here?" Loki asked directly. There was no room in his voice for frivolity.  
"No game." The Grandmaster's face split in another knowing smile. The cat with a canary between its paws. "Here," he offered. "It's yours." He held out the fruit, and Loki arched an eyebrow at him, still as a statue. "Take it. Just _not_ with your hands." Grandmaster's tone had fallen into a purr and somehow his eyes were sharp and predatory and blown wide with lust simultaneously.

"Thank you for dinner, Grandmaster," Loki was brusque and moved to stand. "I'll retire for the evening."  
"Oh no." His host's tone was quick and suddenly seriously rigid. "You're not excused yet. _Sit down._ Take the fruit."  
"Thank you, but _no._ " Loki stared at him levelly, unblinking. Daring this imposter god to challenge him.  
"It wasn't a request. Eat this from my fingers or find yourself on the streets. This is the price for my hospitality."

Loki wanted to laugh, but knew it would be a careless mistake.   
"There is always a price, isn't there? Lowering myself to your _animal whims_ is not one I am willing to pay. I am _god_ , after all."  
"A god?" The other man scoffed. "I thought you were only a _king_ , Ass-guard." His sharp eyes were vicious, hungry to draw blood and eager to feast on this new tidbit of knowledge.   
"I am _whatever_ I wish to be. And that's certainly not your pleasure slave," Loki spit the words and turned before the other man had a chance to retort, walking briskly down the hallway. He shivered in disgust. How by Valhalla had that man thought Loki would lower himself to such base, carnal acts? He wasn't that desperate for shelter or companionship. He never would be! He could certainly find his way off this miserable realm by himself.

Loki craved to simply transport himself out of the building and onto the streets, even back to the rough landscape where he'd first fallen, but he was wary of showing his power to these monsters too soon. He'd levitated his prisoner, Scrapper 93, through magic. It had been a mistake. Grandmaster and his ilk now knew Loki was a commander of sorcery. But they had no way to measure his skills. He would not slip again. He could not afford to underestimate anyone in this strange land and he would not betray himself for a simple laugh.

He strode out of the building under the power of his own two feet, still clad in his black Midgardian clothes. He would also not take a chance magicking Asgardian armor to his form and spoiling the slim advantage he still had. No, he was the one in control. He had to be. 

Loki wandered out into the city, intending to pick it apart by the seams.

  
***


	5. Chapter 5

  
  
The streets reminded him of Vanaheim. Rustic and cobbled together and authentic, gritty. The buildings were constructed either from discarded items or the very earth itself, or in some cases both. It was different entirely from the land of his youth, but through his mother's stories and in his own travels to the land of the Vanir, he'd learned much. In this way, he felt a kinship now to the strange ramshackle huts and vendor wagons and the dusty carters bent low under heavy burdens, ferrying goods to and fro.   
  
But the people themselves? They were a chaos of different species and races and shapes and colors and sizes. It felt more like New York than anywhere else he'd trod. And yet so far divorced from that Midgardian assemblage that it was day and night. There were beggars, meagerly clad. Street cooks wearing a veil of oil and grease spatter and brandishing utensils from four or more arms, calling out to the crowd with rough barks to advertise their fried fares. Holy men clad in all white, solemn, their faces painted red like blood. Children running between the legs of the passersby, full of life and screaming at the tops of their lungs.  
  
It was gratifying that Loki didn't stand out. He could walk aimlessly and blend in with the masses. He was loathe to lose that anonymity yet or to betray his power, so he silently upset a cart of yellow fruit-like objects with a flick of magic and teleported several surreptitiously into his suit pockets for later.  
  
Loki was tired and on guard and anxious, and felt several other mortal indicators of stress. It was irritating. The whole situation was infuriating. How dare that 'Grandmaster'? The presumption that Loki would simply give into his lecherous desires made him want to set the world on fire. Several blocks away from the angry vendor the demigod finally sat, peeling the yellow skin from one fruit and watching the chaos ebb and flow around him. The light had lessened and Loki reasoned that whatever star this realm orbited must be fading from sight. It would be night very soon. 

Sakaar was a humble place, doubtless. It could prove a resourceful spot to recharge and plan how to return to Asgard, face Hela, and resume his ironic internment.  
  
But was that what he really wanted? He didn't know.  
  
He pilfered some shiny disks that appeared to be this realm's currency and obtained quarters for the night. It was meager and small and dusty, but it was at least a place to rest, far away from the prurient Grandmaster or the murderous wastes. Alone, he shed his black suit and conjured his war armor, placing it close to the foot of his cot. He condensed a blade with a thought and settled his arms around it, reclining on the meager bed. He held the weapon close and felt the tattoo lines on his arms and legs warm in response. The ache in his chest blossomed anew and he fell into a light sleep thinking of Bruce.

  
  
***

  
  
In the morn, the din of the city outside his door woke him. It hadn't been the best sleep, a far departure from his regal quarters on Asgard, but it was at least a measure of rest. He resolved to find many categories of resources today. The yellow fruit was long gone, so he legitimately traded some stolen money for a square of fried dough and a warm cup of some spicy beverage. The cuisine was odd, but not inedible.   
  
Abruptly, a craft of unknown type flew overhead and Loki nearly spilled his drink in surprise. He glanced up as the turbine wash flooded the area with hot wind, kicking hair into his face. It disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. He followed it with his eyes before it shrank between the buildings.

"What was that?" he asked the vendor.  
"Are you stupid? Or new here?" The creature's eyes were sharp. "Scrappers. Buzzing low over us pathetic lot. I hate their kind." He spat onto the dusty ground and turned to serve another patron.  
  
So the bounty hunters had resources. Obedience disks, and deathly loyal crew, and the mercurial respect of the Grandmaster. Now flying craft, too. And the ability to elicit ire from the common masses.   
  
The ship had flown towards the tall towers, but Loki wasn't enamored of the idea of returning so soon. He started walking in the opposite direction, where the ship had flown from. Where there was one, there might be more. Perhaps they could pierce the surly bonds of this atmosphere and provide him a step stone on path back to Asgard. 

  
  
***

  
  
The light grew over the course of several hours until it beat down heavily but not without mercy. Loki's brow was dewy with sweat. He hated being hot, it was a detestable and unnatural state. The food vendors were more sparse here but the blacksmiths and metal traders and equipment hawkers grew by measures. At last he found what he searched for, several sharp angular craft similar to the one that had flown overhead hours ago. They seemed to naturally congregate here, halfway between the rigidity and competition of the inner core and the desolation and vulnerability of the wastes. He walked through their midst, reviewing each crew and gleaning insights from his observation. They were no different than the bounty hunters and soldiers of fortune on many realms. Well-muscled, devil may care, continuously inebriated, and armed to the teeth.  
  
Five of these crews he identified as not worth his time. The sixth looked like old warriors bent over their swords. Incredibly useful for information, but undoubtedly a high price would be demanded to gain a modicum of their trust. And then there was the seventh. She was alone, and wary, and clearly skilled at her trade from the way she carried herself. There was a heavy polish on the guns slung low across her dusky back, bared to the sun. Her head was nearly shaved, hair short, pragmatic. Loki pushed back his shoulders, cocked his chin in the way he knew earned him hungry gazes in Asgard's court, and shuffled timidly towards her ship.  
  
She cocked an eye at him while carrying some large piece of equipment down the gangplank. It was an invitation to speak, and she seemed in no hurry to close the awkward silence and make the first move. A power move, this.  
Loki let the smile grow across his face slowly, not threatening, and poured all the shy derisive charm into it that he could muster.  
  
"What do I want, you'll ask yourself? It would be easier if you asked _me_. And I would simply answer: I'm looking for work." Loki let his lids blink slowly, watching her for subtle reactions, of which she gave away none. Not yet, at least.  
"Work? I work alone." Her accent was light but calloused with a thousand bounties sold, a thousand battles won and lost.  
"Ah, not _that_ type of work. Any other work. I'm no bounty hunter. But I am fit and sharp. I could carry that load for you? Do maths and balance your ledger?" He allowed the edge of his lips to curl up lightly, eyebrows rasied, as if he were still young and naive and unblemished.   
  
With a half-cough that ended in a chuckle, he knew he had her. By Ymir, he still had his charm, at least.  
"I can carry my own loads. And I have no coin to pay you with. This ship is a greedy bitch." She finished making her way down the ramp and set the equipment on the sand with a soft thump.  
"I'm not looking for money."  
"No? Not looking for 'work' and not wanting 'money'?" she chuckled. "I know this is a trap, but I'll bite. What do you want instead?" Her honey eyes twinkled with mischief.  
"Information. Knowledge. An understanding about this rat-cursed char of a planet." Her eyes grew wide in her head then. A mistake? She was too eager now.

"You're fresh meat, aren't you? Could've fooled me with your fine clothes, but I guess that should have been a dead lead. No one weak keeps their own finery for long. And by the time the strong have taken it," she stepped close to feel the texture of his leather lapel between her index finger and thumb, suggestive or threatening, Loki couldn't tell, "it's worn out and lost its gloss."  
  
" _Fresh meat?!_ " Oh Idunn, he wanted to make her swallow her words. It would take just a spark of magic, just the barest intimation of power. But he hid his snarl behind a smile. "Indeed, you see through me. I arrived here yesterday. It's an absolute wreck of a world. How do you stand it?"  
"Me?" Her eyebrows shot up. "I was born here. Samara or Scrapper 107A, if you please." She held out her hand like royalty, as if he should kiss it. He played along and mocked at a bow and a breathy kiss across her knuckles, but didn't dare. Her fingers were coated with Idunn-knew-what, something black and viscous, and he was loathe to bring them to his lips.  
  
"Okay. I'll keep you." She cocked her chin at him, and gazed him up and down appraisingly. "Odds are you'll be broken in a month, and not worth a lick to me then. For now, I can give you a bunk in my craft, and some knowledge and wisdom here and there. But food and drink: you're on your own. You are _not_ part of my crew."  
"Then what's my first task, captain?"

  
  
***

  
The tasks were easily done. Wash the ship? Accomplished in a minute with some slight of hand and a sprinkle of magic. She was shocked at his speed and the quality of his work. Change the air filters? Scrape out the dead creatures plasticked to the engine intake? Buff the exhaust to a shine? Disgusting, but accomplished in a blink by be-spelling the craft with the same low-level magic he used to use on Frigga when she tasked him with tidying his chambers as a boy.  
  
By the time Samara had returned from selling her scavenged goods, the light had dimmed. Loki was drenched with conjured sweat to sell his false labors, and she was nothing but simple minded in the face of his apparent herculean efforts. She settled down for the evening in a room on her craft that had a multitude of different purposes: kitchen, office, repair shop, medical bay, trophy room. She had one hand wrapped around a tall flask of golden liquor. The other held a knife the size of Mjolnir, shaving away pieces of some cooked animal. He hoped it was an animal, at least.  
  
After a few minutes of silence and Loki doing his utmost best to look contrite and timid, she cut off a hunk of meat and threw it into his lap sympathetically. Despite her earlier intimations that sustenance was outside of their lackadaisical arrangement.  
"Alright, what questions do you have, greenie? You have until I empty this glass, because by then I will be too drunk to answer anything properly." He chuckled lowly and gnawed on the meat for a minute in thought.  
  
"How do I get off this planet?"  
  
Her laughter shook the craft and Loki's undignified look of pique wasn't at all for show.  
"Get off? _Sakaar?_ " She paused to take a swig of liquor. "You don't, sweetie. None of us do. That's a stupid question. Next."  
"Why not? Everyone says there's no way off, but I haven't heard a compelling reason, much less _any_ reason as to why." He could tell her senses were dulling and time was of the essence. He really didn't want to be indebted to her, even as curious a creature as she was, for more than a day or two. He had to get back to Asgard, above all else. He certainly had to stop Hela, perhaps avenge Odin, and then resume the endless search for Bruce. In that order.  
"Haven't you been up in the air yet?" He shook his head no, eyebrows knitted. What did that matter? He'd been up in the stratospheric rooms of the Grandmaster, but he wasn't about to admit such a thing to her. And it hardly qualified as flying.  
  
"Gravity does a funky thing here. I'm told it's different elsewhere, but here..." she took another long drink and wiped her mouth with the leather brace encircling her forearm. "Here, your body gets weighed down the higher you go. At five hundred meters, you feel a bit heavy in the boots, like after a long bender. At a thousand, you can feel your body shifting. At ten thousand? They say your lungs can't hold the weight of the air and your stomach comes through your arse. I've never been," she was quick to admit. "Our ships won't go higher than two thousand, limited by the Sakaar Air Safety Bureau for our protection."  
  
"No one wants their stomach on the ground," he quizzically agreed. How strange. A realm where the rules of the universe were upended? How was it even possible? He hadn't spoken the question, but she answered it for him regardless. She was deep in her cups now.  
"I don't understand it, but they say it's because of the star that orbits us."  
"Some captive star?" he inquired, assuming he hadn't heard correctly. She waved off the crazy concept hazily.   
"The star is the reason you can't get off the planet."  
"It's not 'by the Grandmaster's will' or some nonsense like that?"  
"No, no, it's because of the star. Once you're here, boy-o," she reached across the small table and gripped his hand, "you're here to stay."  
  
She stood with the accustomed clumsiness of the frequent drunkard.  
"I'm off to my bunk. There's an empty storage closet on the right. See that you don't get curious and start exploring the ship, cause I've got it automated and booby-trapped based on my level of consciousness. Unconsciousness? Semi-consciousness? Whatever. Get some sleep, I've got things of lots for you to clean in the morning."  
  
Slurring and losing motor skills by the second, she shuffled off to her quarters. Loki stayed behind in the everything-room. The star? It made no sense. Was it some new type of celestial body that only existed in exotic space? Did it have electromagnetic properties that disturbed the minds of those who flew too close? Was there more than one star? He wasn't able to see it distinctly in the day-lit sky. Was it a conscious being? The possibilities were endless and he'd seen enough in his long life not to discount even the most absurd line of reasoning.  
  
Loki finally migrated to the bare storage room and conjured a luxurious hammock. He pulled a blanket made of the finest elvish silk threads from his dimensional-warp repository. The tattoos on his arms felt cool and pulsed with some strange sated energy he couldn't name. In the relative safety of this stranger's ship, on a planet that was chaos incarnate, Loki slept the best he had in months.

  
  
***

  
The morning announced itself with a dozen loud fists against the metal storage door and Loki was wide awake in half a second. He dissolved the blanket and the hammock and smoothed his hair and tunic before throwing himself into a loose-limbed stance. Ready for battle.  
  
The door opened inwards but it was only Samara. He let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.  
"Morning. Profit to be made, stuff to steal, prisoners to capture. Out, out, out!"  
  
_By Ymir_ , he loathed being directed around like this. But she was the first to show him the slightest modicum of kindness. And he had so much yet to learn in order to decipher his way off this horrible little backwater realm.  
  
"Yes, your _majesty_ , what shall it be today?" Loki inclined his head slightly in mock deference, a pale smirk on his face. Samara was a different creature today. A giggle escaped her mouth, belying her robust figure and the intimidating blades she'd already buckled to her dark body at this early hour. He couldn't help the surprise that showed on his face.  
  
"Today your queen demands you take the spare recursion-thrusters to the shop and wait for them to be flushed and cleaned." Her playful smile turned serious. "Don't let that fat turd Jezza take them out of your sight. Those thrusters are worth more than his ass and your ass combined." She was thoughtful for a moment. "Mine too." Samara scrunched her face up, realizing a mistake. "Shit, I shouldn't have said that. Just _wait_ for them and bring them back in one piece. And clean."  
  
Samara tried her best to be intimidating, but Loki could see through her game now. It was naive and hopeful but protective and slightly endearing. She was trying to carve her own path in this discarded world, but she was still young in years and mind.  
  
"Never fear, I shan't betray your trust and will bring them back in better condition than before, _completely undefiled_." It was a whim to flirt after so long, even if there was no heat or intention behind his words. The sugary tone of his voice almost made her blush and Loki reveled in his success. It never hurt to endear oneself in an opportune moment. She handed him the equipment and pointed him in the direction of the mechanic and he set out in the dim morning light.  
  
Loki didn't know enough to do the job himself, but he did know to enchant the hands of the mechanic Jezza to compel him to do the job, correctly, quickly, without fault or deception.  
  
Then the demigod spent the rest of the morning away from the shop while the man worked, finding out more about the mystery star that was the source of all his troubles.

***


	6. Chapter 6

What he found was little, and quite unhelpful. Some Sakaarians called it simply the sun and praised it for keeping them grounded and focused on their meager lives. The white-clad holy men called it a god, and worshiped its power and punctuality. Others still said it was a demon, invisibly sucking the life from their planet. 

Frustrated, Loki gave up and returned back to the shop, the evil star high overhead but totally indistinguishable from the background atmosphere. Jezza had completed the overhaul on Samara's thrusters. The fear glazing the man's eyes as Loki dropped the enchantment and he regained control of his own hands was the insurance the sorcerer needed to see. He left with a whistle on his tongue and a self-satisfied smile at his own powers. 

Yes, he hadn't meant to use his magic... But it wasn't a public display of power. It wasn't anything that would compromise him.

The demi-god wound his way through the vendors and stopped for something to eat. At one shop, there were rows of _something_ , some foodstuff. Fried on a stick. Loki wasn't sure if it had been sentient at one point, but the delicious smell overrode his mild qualms and his need to identify it before consuming it. He balanced the cleaned thrusters in one hand and was fishing coin from a pocket with the other when a child ran into his legs. He didn't knock Loki over but certainly upset his aim. The child sprawled on the ground for a moment, disoriented.

"Rarrrrgh!" the little one roared when he recovered, play-pretending. The child had a mask covering his face, clearly smiling underneath despite his tumble. The mask was painted green, bared teeth drawn on some type of paper by crude young hands. The small one picked himself up from the dusty ground and ran off gaily in the opposite direction.

But there was something about the mask that was strangely familiar.

"Five even," the cook slurred, offering Loki the sizzling, impaled food. He traded his coins for the meal and couldn't help but ask.  
"What was that child's mask? Something strange and green? A local beast?"  
"Oh, the champion? That's Grandmaster's Hulk. He's fighting again soon I think." The vendor turned to another customer and Loki's hearing went white. The chaos of the market faded around him. Hulk?

"Wait, what? What's a hulk?" He was insistent, pushing through the other customers to grab the vendor's attention again. A woman gasped at being pushed from her spot in line.  
"What? C'mon, I already served you, buddy." He turned again, but Loki would not be ignored.   
" _I said_ , what's a hulk? _Answer me._ " He ground his teeth together. "Answer me, or I spear this skewer through your vacillating nostrils." He brandished the food like a weapon. Loki internally cringed at his own incendiary overreaction, but he was like a wolf on a trail and he couldn't ignore the metaphorical drops of blood in the snow before him.

"Wow, bud. You need to _calm_ down. Hulk. THE Hulk. I don't know what species he is. He just kicks ass. If you want to see him, check out the Grandmaster's Fighting Ring schedule at the arena." He resumed serving the other patrons. The indignant lady was first in line, her pawish hand outstretched. "I just make food, man. You're asking the wrong guy."

***

Loki walked back to Samara's ship in a daze. His food had cooled on the stick, untouched. The repaired thrusters were in his hands still, but entirely forgotten. 

Hulk? _The_ Hulk? It couldn't be the same creature. Over the whole wide universe, the probability was astoundingly small. A beast, green, angry, deft at physical brutality. Hulk. No, it was such a common moniker, a name you'd attach to anything. A pile of flotsam. It had no meaning, nothing imbued upon it. In a trillion possibilities, a hulk would appear time and time again. It didn't mean it was Banner. It didn't mean it was Bruce.

_Bruce._

The name felt foreign on his tongue. It made his veins thrum and his lungs forget their function and the tattoos on his arms and legs vibrate. It wasn't longing. He wasn't some doe-eyed maiden. But it was damn close. 

It couldn't be true. It was just a mistake, just a cruel twist by the Norns. They loved to play with fate and irony, and prided themselves on cruelty. And after all, wasn't Loki their new favorite toy?

And wouldn't he have felt the doctor's presence through their blood bond? Or did the silence have meaning? Had their bond been severed the moment Urd took back Helgrid's signet? He remembered the foul wretch devouring it in one gulp. 

Or maybe Loki had felt it, but the buzz of the connection had been buried under the fractious events of that rueful, awful day. There was no chance for the their tenuous connection to be heard above the crashing waves of the unmerciful tempest that was his life.

He had to come up with a plan. Leaving Sakaar and vanquishing Hela and any debt he owed to Odin's memory was instantly relegated to a lower priority. He had to determine first if Banner truly was here. And then find a way to get them both safely away. Away from Sakaar. And together. Everything else could come later.

"Whoa, dude. What gives?" Samara took the parts from his hands before Loki realized his blind feet had carried him to the ramp of her craft. "Did you get me screwed over? Or are these still _my_ recursion-thrusters?"

Loki blinked and came back to life.  
"No, no, everything went fine. I watched Jezza like a raven and he didn't compromise them. They are in perfect working order, I guarantee it."  
"Then what's with the face? Why are you on another planet?"

He shook himself internally and cursed himself for letting his mask fall so completely.  
"Nothing at all." The smile he forced was wan as he followed her into the ship. "I'm thinking about how, if I'm cursed to stay on this planet, I might pass the time more enjoyably. I heard Grandmaster has some contest of champions? What do you know about it?" She cocked a knowing smile in his direction.  
"Well... I suppose you've done as I requested this morning. So some small payment is in order." Samara flopped down on a stack of boxes in the everything-room. "But this afternoon, get ready for lavatory cleaning duty."

He couldn't even muster the energy to feel or look disgusted.  
" _Tell me._ "   
"It's every ten days, at the end of the orbital cycle. The next one is in four more days."  
"Who competes?" His tone was terse and a shade of desperate and he knew it and he should have cared but he couldn't be bothered.

"Prisoners, mostly. Then every so often, a 'champion' will rise and will last a few cycles until he's finally killed too. But this current one... I hear he's been crushing the competition. _Literally_." But there was only one word that pierced Loki's thoughts.  
"Killed? These fights are to the death?"  
"Always," she shrugged. "And why not? Life is cheap here. And surviving a defeat? Ugh, the worst. How could you live with yourself?"

It wasn't worth contemplating that platitude. He'd survived defeat and worse. Much worse. He was an orphan now, truly. Laufey? Dead at his hand. Frigga? Dead by his actions. Odin? Dead in spite of his machinations. There were far worse things than defeat. It simply look a lifetime to find out the brutal truth.

He wouldn't begrudge Samara her youth or naivety, so he simply shook it off. The important thing was he had four days to determine if Bruce was Grandmaster's puppet before the next battle put whomever this Hulk was back in harm's way. And then somehow find a means to escape this rock. He had to strategize a way to ferry both he and Bruce off the planet. Nothing was certain here under a potentially sentient sun. And despite the Hulk's fortitude on Midgard, there was no guarantee he would not lose his life in the next bout on a foreign and desolate world.

But then again, there was no guarantee that the green hulk of the child's mask was the same man he knew. He decided not to entertain that possibility yet. He would deal with the cruel disappointment when it happened. If it happened. Not now.

"Four days? I guess I have until then to earn my ticket fare." He cast a sliver of a smile at the bounty hunter. "You don't have any money to pay me, correct? Hmm. I think I must find some _gainful_ employment instead." He cast about to the unseen horizon and she was quick to react. Oh, it was fun to pull on her strings.

"I didn't say that. Just that I can't pay much. And I can't afford to take you on as crew." Loki threw her a sly smile.   
"Oh, I'm certain I can find my way to a ticket without needing to beg your charity," he bated. She reacted by handing him a bucket and scrubber and a knowing smile.   
"Good. Back to work. The shower is disgusting. Hop to it."

***

The whole lavatory was now immaculate. It had taken Loki the span of an eyeblink to accomplish. He ducked out of the craft when Samara was off somewhere. An errand, perhaps. She'd be fine. And he needed info.

He moved through the throngs of people swiftly. The light was golden now and children were being ushered inside, heralding the onset of night, of mealtime. Of dark and sinister things the day would quake to look upon. It was just the environment Loki loved best. He followed his instinct and a few quickly answered questions that guided him towards a mammoth circular building. From a good distance away, the stench of rotting offal and dried blood curled into his nose. The smell of warfare. Of repeated and bloody violence, condensed in one spot, saturating the soil over and over for eons.

How old was this society? It seemed as though it sprang out of the wasteland, but perhaps it was much more ancient than he surmised. How old was the Grandmaster then, for that matter? Was he like Loki, lifespan so elongated he was nearly immortal? The demi-god didn't want to dwell on those thoughts and instead kept his senses sharp as he approached the great arena.

Bills of advertisement were plastered one over the other, eluding to a long procession of spectacle and carnage. As he grew closer the concentration increased. The recent ones were easy to identify. There were a series alike, green words screaming out from the sheet. The HULK versus Ulimat. The HULK versus Klaxor 5.3. The HULK versus Abraxas. The HULK versus Oot-Reg-Ulannik. Well this creature certainly had a brand and a reputation.

The list of opponents read on and on. It was dizzying to see the dozens of bills that had been layered on top of each other. Loki ripped a handful off one wall, but there were still more underneath. How long had this 'hulk' dominated in Grandmaster's arena? If it were not Banner... A cold thrill raced down his spine at the prospect of another seemingly limitless being: rage incarnate. 

Whether Banner or not, doubtless this creature had achieved fame by now and a mystique and envy. And if he kept the patrons coming, then the Grandmaster would be compelled to keep him out of the gladiator's dens and in something more befitting his extremely profitable status. He certainly wouldn't be here, penned near the squalor. But it was certainly worthwhile to look and be sure.

Loki accosted one solider, hunched over his spear and his drink but answers were not forthcoming. The demi-god had a wicked idea and changed his visage into the bounty hunter that had been melted in front of his eyes by Grandmaster's staff. Scrapper 93 had seemed to be respected, maybe feared, and hopefully news of his demise had not spread quickly.

But the solider either did not recognize him, or did not care, or was too far gone to assist. Loki continued to wander through the stadium until he found the cages where the fighters were kept prisoner. The stench was horrifying, the excrement and blood and terror of a thousand species mingled together in a putrid brew. He stood up to the bars and addressed a small group, some standing, some sitting, some passed out in the relative oblivion of sleep. Not even beasts were kept in such conditions on Asgard. Yes, he had seen worse in his life. But not by a wide margin.

" _Pathetic_. Are you all so afraid of this Hulk? I can smell your fear," he drawled in as close approximation to the bounty hunter as he could remember. The insult garnered a few angry snorts, but it appeared they weren't willing to waste energy on a more robust answer. "Which one of you will he kill next? I'm betting it's you, 'tiny'." Loki pointed a gnarled finger at a monolith of a creature, more stone than flesh. He was still upright and appeared halfway lucid.

"Me? I'm not worth the fight. They'll probably send Doug after I've had the first round." His voice was uncharacteristically light despite his size. The creature looked quizzically at Loki, if a pile of rocks could be quizzical. "You know that much, sir. You're the one that got the best of me, after all."

Damn. The bounty hunter was too familiar here, but the large creature wasn't one bit menacing. At least not yet. He was oddly jovial despite his desperate condition.  
"My old head forgets." Loki rubbed it ruefully and conjured a bottle of liquor to his hand, tipping it back with great exaggeration. "Maybe the Hulk will be beat this time after all."

"Not a chance," the beast was firm. "No one can beat him. He's been here for months and no one has scratched him."  
"No, I think his time has come," Loki baited the creature. "Where is his cell again? I aim to bet against him this time." Doubtless there was gambling associated with this bloodsport. Like most bloodsport.  
"You _have_ lost it, boss. Too much liquor. He's not here. Hasn't been for a long time. Grandmaster keeps him close. I reckon he won't let _you_ near him before a fight." The pile of rocks began to laugh in a strange, light way. So unlike what Loki expected a pile of rocks should sound like.

"That's right, that's right. I'm off my head." He took another long swig from his phantom bottle. "I'm better off heading home before I land in there with you fellas." He thought twice and cocked his head before turning to go. "What's your name, rocky? I've picked up so many scraps I can't remember anymore."  
"Korg, sir. Same as it was when you got me."  
"Good luck in there, Korg. By a fair wind, you won't face the Hulk next time." Loki wasn't sure why he added that, but the beast's gentle nature seemed a wasteful thing to kill for no other reason than to sell tickets.

***

So Grandmaster had the Hulk. If it was Bruce, which seemed like a far possibility, Loki would have to cross paths with the self-declared god again to determine it. It didn't seem worth squandering the two remaining days he had before the arena battle trying to get into the fortress alone, so Loki spent the time instead finishing Samara's menial tasks in an eyeblink and canvassing the local group of pilots about the odd ways gravity manifested itself on Sakaar. Why were they all convinced there was no way out? He desperately wanted to take flight and find out for himself.

Two nights before the battle, to distract himself, he asked Samara.

"How high have you flown?" he baited. She chuckled before responding.  
"Are you on this again? Trying to find a way off the planet? It can't be done."  
"Alright, but just answer my question. How high have you been?" They had developed a strange form of camaraderie. She and Loki were lounging in the everything-room. Samara had her boots off and was choking down some dish approximating noodles. Loki had his hair pulled back in a bun to keep it out of the grease, cleaning some obscure engine parts in a vat of caustic chemicals.  
"The limiter only takes us to two thousand," she warned. He saw the look in her eye and recognized it immediately.  
"So it does. But how high have _you_ gone?"  
"Three thousand eight hundred. Limiter's an easy bitch to hack." She bragged, smirking, swallowing another forkful of her dinner.

"You took the limiter off? No, no, I don't believe it. It's a proud lie, but not a good one." She was too new. Like freshly washed linen. New and easy to manipulate.  
"Arse. I have too. Half of this ship is modified or jammed or spliced together. Topaz would have my hunters' registration if she saw a fraction of what I've crammed in this beast." Loki humored her youthful pride with a smile.  
"If that's true... take me to twenty-one hundred. It's not an egregious violation. Just over the edge. Just to prove you've actually bested the limiter." Her smile spread.  
"You rotten cocky bastard. Don't think I don't know what you're trying to do. Bait me to take you up and then see how far you can push it. You want our guts to come falling out our assholes?" Loki gave her a smile, _the_ smile. The million watt grin that said he'd been found out and he didn't care one jot. The smile that got maidens to weep with desire and old men to cry in despair.  
"So, will you?"

***

It wasn't long before they were in the air, skimming over the dark waters of Sakaar. Samara deftly avoided the tumult of detritus that poured out of the open wormholes. The lights of the city faded from view and she began to push the nose of the craft higher. 

Higher. And higher. They reached nineteen-hundred and a warning whistle started. She flicked it off with one finger, not even looking away from the horizon, second-nature. Up and up she raised them until the altimeter showed 1999. Then 2000. Then 2001. The nose was level with the horizon again.

"See? You owe me." Loki could indeed feel his weight gathering in the soles of his boots. It was a strange sensation.  
"This proves nothing. A bit of error in the tolerance setting." He grinned at her, knowing she could see his face in the corner of her eye. "Higher."

She smirked and pushed the nose up again, needing hardly any prompting to show off. 2010. 2040. 2050. 2100. They leveled out again and she glanced over at the demigod, smiling in victory.  
"Congratulations. I _do_ believe you now," he deadpanned. The feeling of lead in his soles had increased a little. But in effect, it still told him nothing. 

Faster than the eye could follow, he reached out and pulled the craft's yoke back, wrenching the nose up beyond the edge of the horizon.  
" _You little shit!_ " she yelled and tried to push the nose down again, but Loki was far stronger and held the yoke back while they climbed.

2200\. 2300. 2590. 2700. 3000. His eyeballs began to feel like overripe grapes and his bottom lip hung heavy from his mouth. 3200. 3500. 3820. The blood was rushing under his fingernails and he felt his stomach begin to droop as it did after a bout of heavy feasting with Thor.

4300\. He gasped, disbelieving. The sensation literally weighed heavy on his brain and self-preservation forced his hand to release the yoke. Samara collapsed on top of it and the craft swooped into a nosedive.

3500, 2975, 2600. The ground rushed up at them. 2210, 1800. Loki swayed where he stood, bracing against the fuselage as she regained her senses, took back control of the craft, and finally leveled it out.  
"You _piece of fucking trash!_ I trusted you." She spit it in his face, voice low and boiling with anger.  
"I _didn't_ trust you, my dear," he countered. "But I understand now. There's something at work on this planet that defies the basic laws of nature."  
"And now that you have that knowledge, what will you do?! Grow old and _miserable_ here like the rest of us, or drink yourself into oblivion?" Her face flushed with blood from the exertion and her affronted rage. "I don't give a _shit_ either way. You nearly killed us! You're out of here and _off my ship_." 800, 450, 125, 0. Samara brought the craft down ungracefully, settling onto the hard pan with a jolt.

"Get _the fuck_ out of here. If you _ever_ show your face again, I will gladly carve you into pieces and feed you to Grandmaster's beast." Her face was stone but her eyes were rimmed with red.  
"I actually might enjoy that," he parlayed lightly, belying her anger and smothered betrayal.   
"I _sincerely_ doubt it." She drew a weapon and leveled it at his head. Loki chuckled, but inside he was disappointed in himself for squandering the one sincere ally he'd made on this forsaken rock.  
"Alright: I'm going." He walked down the gangplank and looked back for good measure, but her anger was vivid, undiminished. He slunk off into the night.

***


	7. Chapter 7

  
The nights on Sakaar were no different from anywhere else in the universe.

He was angry. At Samara, at Grandmaster, at Hela, at the Norns. At himself.  
At anything and anyone that dared to cross his path. A man bumped into him, a legitimate bounty hunter or an aspirant poseur, it mattered not. The man sneered at Loki, entirely unaware of who he had accosted and what precariously dangerous mood the king of Asgard was in. Loki could feel the rage build at the center of his core and suddenly he had no desire to dress the man down verbally. No, he only wanted to physically beat the sneer from his face with his own two hands. The man began to open his mouth, whether to goad Loki or to spit in his face? It did not matter. The sorcerer took a swing at the man just because he _could_. To Hel with it all. 

There was no magic to it, no art. It devolved swiftly into a fistfight, plain and simple. Bor, it felt good to feel his blood race through his veins and to shed someone else's. He wasn't _weak_. He wasn't _powerless_. He was in control of himself and his life and all he wanted right now was to _destroy_ this man's face. The fight was brutal and efficient and Loki punished the stranger for his insolent clumsiness with the simple force of his own muscles. The man's friends pulled them apart at last. Loki let them. His own bottom lip was split and the blood from his broken nose poured down his pale chin, but it did not matter. The violence was pure and cathartic. The other man was worse off by far and slunk into the dark to lick his unexpected wounds, supported by his friends, clearly limping.

With the edge successfully taken off his rage, the demi-god strode into a bar. His head was in a rush from the risky flight and the heated words with Samara and the one-sided fight with a nameless stranger. He was never one for liquor on Asgard, preferring the silent shadows of Thor's celebratory feasts rather than joining in. And he certainly didn't expect much from this establishment, but he sidled up to the purveyor all the same and ordered something dark blue that looked as evil as he felt deep down inside.

It went to his head. _Quickly_. More so than he would have imagined, but perhaps it was this place, or the quality of the beverage though he doubted it. Or perhaps an after effect of flying too far from the planet's surface. By Ymir, he welcomed it. The carelessness was liberating after having guarded his actions for so long. Around Samara, in front of the gladiators, Grandmaster, the whole lot of Sakaarians. And even on Asgard, pretending to be Odin. Pretending he was someone else. Pretending he didn't ache _everyday_ from the blasted absence of that simple mortal. A being who was far, far beneath his station. Who had quickly woven his way like a hookworm into Loki's psyche. 

Oh, it was all so _ridiculous_. He ordered another drink, but the bartender refused and Loki shattered the empty glass on the bar top in anger. Three or four burly creatures picked him up bodily and half pushed, half threw him out of the tavern. He caught himself before nosediving into the sand, but it was a close thing.

It was all so unfair! He raged and rallied internally at his own stupidity and the curse the Norns had burdened him with. The streets were empty now. Just like his cold, desolate heart. There was no one around to direct his anger at and no reason he could conjure now to rage at inanimate objects. He felt all of his anger, his purpose, drain out of his body like a cataract, leaving a gaping hole in its wake. Loki healed his knuckles and his nose with a thought and gracefully stumbled off to a corner of a dark alley to sleep away the liquor.

***

The bench was cool under his thighs and there was a crisp chill in the air.  
"Do we have a problem?" He felt his mouth form the words from a distance, detached from himself.  
"No. No problem. It's nothing." Bruce was sitting across from him in the same park near Stark Tower on that same stolen evening all those months ago.  
"Good. Any questions?" His voice sounded cold even to his own ears.  
"Just one." Bruce licked his lips nervously and Loki's eyes were drawn like a magnet. "Can I kiss you?" Loki nodded, a king judiciously granting an audience to a patient, devoted courtier. Bruce brought his hand slowly to Loki's chin, cupping it with a ghost of a touch. His soft brows knit, concentrating, trying to not break the spell he must think Loki trapped under. 

The sorcerer refused to blink while Banner moved closer, steadfast, summoning up all the mortal courage he could. Their mouths met and Bruce's eyes fluttered shut, reveling in the feeling. Loki knew by now it was a dream. And maybe it was an excuse, but he let himself bathe in the affections of the image his subconscious had created. He closed his eyes and drowned in the feeling. The intensity of Bruce's lips were not dulled by time, or fantasy, or the liquor he knew was still swimming in his veins.

The doctor pulled away and Loki opened his eyes.  
"I missed you," Bruce admitted, eyes still unfocused and glazed.  
"I know you did." In the dream, Loki could do whatever he pleased and he brought his hand to the back of Banner's neck, cradling the base of his skull and threading through his soft curls. He should have done this more. Before everything went wrong.   
"Why haven't you come and found me? Have you given up?" In the dream, Banner was so earnest, no deception or accusation in his voice at all despite his thorny words.  
"No, I haven't given up. I'm stuck. On this horrible little planet." Loki couldn't help the menacing curl that twisted his lips now or the growl that began to condense in the back of his throat, begging to be let loose.

"You're _stuck?_ Somehow I don't believe that." Banner's voice was light and jovial, as if he didn't know what he was asking. But of course he didn't. This was just a dream.  
"The rules of nature are all subverted here. I can't escape. I tried."  
"Hmmm. That's interesting." Bruce pushed his glasses up his nose with one finger, pretending to ponder the concept heavily. It was a front. Loki could see through it. The man had never been skilled at subtlety. Even in his own dreams. But the next words stole the breath from his lungs.  
"When do the laws of nature get upended? _When?_ When have you _ever_ seen that? Think hard, now." Banner winked at him in a most uncharacteristic manner. And Loki woke up.

***

When were the laws of the universe challenged? When were they tossed out wholesale? He thought and strained his memory until his head throbbed under last night's debt. 

When? _Never_. 

Never in his long life had he seen it. Gravity growing stronger with distance. It would be like rain falling up. Or a star bleeding darkness. Or air being heavier than lead. Cold fire. Hot ice. It simply didn't happen.

So why was it happening now?

***


	8. Chapter 8

  
An unbroken white plain spread in front of his eyes. At the edges of the alabaster sand, at the very limits of his vision, a row of dark mountains rose. They were like a dusting of cloud, so low, and so far at the horizon they were rendered nearly invisible. Loki wasn't walking, he was marching. He was putting the capital city far behind him, and swiftly too. Trekking to see what else comprised this chaos of a planet. What would he find that made no sense, that tested the limits of his understanding of the universe? It was an innate urge from the center of his being: to push and prod and disrupt and break the very rules of this place.

He'd gone up in Samara's ship the day before, and felt the bewildering effects of gravity firsthand. But then last night's emotional and physical downward spiral had occurred and the cleverest mortal he'd known was telling him to poke further. Even if it had been a dream, his subconscious in the guise of Banner was trying to tell him something. 

Theory 1. Maybe the strange effect only held sway over the city's environs. Perhaps its effects were different elsewhere.

Therefore, Loki picked a direction and started walking while the opaque light that represented the sun still clung to the horizon and his head was still foggy from drink. That had been hours ago and now it was fully bright, the light having spread far over his head. But it felt as though he wasn't getting anywhere fast. The mountains were still ahead of him and the city still behind, undiminished.

A fuzzy dark dot finally appeared on the horizon. At last, something different. Some sign of progress. As one foot fell in front of the other, the object grew closer and closer. 

It was an old woman. Withered and hunched by age, wrinkles like a storybook over her face. One eye sharp and dark, following him like a hawk. The other pale blue and unseeing.

"Where are you headed, traveler?" She called in a voice like cracked glass.  
"Away from the city, crone. What lies in this direction?" His tone was even and neutral and he didn't expect to send her into a fit of laughter.  
"The city, fool. The city is all there is. There's no point to walking further. Turn back before the desert turns your body to ash."

No point? Turn back? _Fie_.

He set his jaw and strode right past her.  
"You'll regret it! Fool!" she shouted after him, making no move to follow him or to walk away.

The sorcerer put a fair amount of distance between them until he turned back around. The woman was gone, disappeared into the horizon behind him. But the city was still there, omnipresent.

He walked on and on, the hard pan crunching under his boots. There were no other footprints in the unchanging landscape. No one else brave or foolhardy enough to try walking to an uncertain doom within an unknown destination away from the only source of food and water and shelter there appeared to be on this horrid rock.

No, there had to be something more. There must. A single city when there was all this empty space to sprawl? It beggared belief.

A fuzzy dot appeared on the horizon. Now he was getting somewhere, even if the mountains beyond and the city behind told a different tale. The dot grew and he blinked to clear his eyes, to make them reveal a different sight. An old woman. Hunched and wizened by age. It could not be the same woman. But why would there be a federation of the elderly to greet him in the wasteland? Would there be another after this one? It made no sense.

"Where are you headed, traveler?"  
"Away from the city." He didn't stop to engage in conversation. She had one dark eye and one pale blue. A stunning coincidence.  
"The city is all there is. There's no point to walking further-"  
"I should turn back before the desert turns my body to ash?" he cut her off, petulantly.  
"Yes!" she called after him. "Turn back, your fortune lies behind you."

But he had already put her out of earshot. He'd increased his pace and lengthened his stride. This was ridiculous. A mirage, maybe that's what she was. Or some strange phenomenon of this desert. 

He laughed out loud at his own trepidation. There was no one here. No reason to hold back his magic any longer. He quickened his pace with a little sorcery. The mountains beyond beckoned. The city behind jeered. 

A fuzzy dot formed on the horizon. At the speed he was moving, it quickly resolved into an old woman. The same woman.  
"Where are you headed, traveler?"  
" _Sod off_." He sped past her and kept on going. Her words trailed behind, lost in the air.

There was no one around, nothing above, no air traffic. And yet... he was making no progress. No matter how fast he walked or how much ground he covered.

A fuzzy dot formed on the horizon. Loki stopped in his tracks and roared in anger until the veins bulged from his neck. Frustration poured out of his throat until it felt like he had no more energy inside him. He sunk to his knees in the sand.

There were three sets of boot prints leading away: ahead of where he knelt. All the same shape and size as the four sets that were behind him. The same ones he was presently making in the crunchy sand.

An illusion.

He'd been walking in circles this whole time. How many others had come this way once upon a time? Were those mountains on the distant horizon real? Had they ever been? Was he even meant to see them? They were indeed just at the limits of his Jotun vision. Perhaps a handful of others saw them and then were simply discouraged by the horizon and the endless sand. But others... no, others had failed to see them entirely, had kept going, and required the old crone to turn them back.

"Where are you headed, traveler?" she called from afar, her voice faint on the air.  
"The city!" he shouted in reply.  
"Excellent idea. I'm headed there too. There's no reason to go any place other than the city."

Loki stood and walked to her, inspecting her form as one would an insect on a pin.  
"What are you? Ghost, illusion, harpy, or mechanical creature?"  
"Where are you headed, traveler?" That answered it. A spelled illusion. One with form, but no substance. How had he not seen it at once? He so badly wanted to pick apart the threads of the sorcery, but a last thought stilled his hands. Whoever set this up would know. Like a lock picked or a trap sprung. And there was no reason to give himself away. Not yet.

Was this what Banner had implied in his dream last night? 'Where do the rules of the universe upend themselves?' In the realm of magic, of course. Did that mean the whole planet was bespelled? The gravity: to make it appear as if there was no escape? The ground: to carry him endlessly back to the city? Was even the earth corrupted to make diggers' tools blunt and useless? Who could-

But the answer was clear even as the question formed in his mind. Grandmaster. He must clearly be a sorcerer, too. And vastly powerful in order to weave such a folie à deux that enveloped the entire citizenry, the whole realm. 

Loki at last turned back to the city and began walking, his resolve settling like steel.  
"You run ahead, I'll catch up," the illusory woman called from behind. "There's no place on Sakaar like the city." How true that was.

****


	9. Chapter 9

Loki had bunked down for the night in a room above a blacksmithy. The walls were sooty, but the air was still and quiet. After his tiring and fruitless day on the plains, he sank easily into sleep. But he did not sleep well. Tomorrow was the fight.

He dreamt of Asgard, of standing on a balcony in the palace high above the placid sea and the sprawling city. He was clad only in soft velvet breeches. The wind curled through his dappled hair and over his bare skin and he closed his eyes, drinking in the smells and the sounds of the place he used to call home. But the palace felt empty around him. The city streets quiet. Not even a gull cried on the air.

He was alone.

He didn't spare a thought for why the palace was devoid of life or why this fictitious Asgard was depeopled. Only the horrible fear and ache of isolation condensed in his chest. He was forsaken. Enthroned, crowned, ascendant, yes. But utterly alone.

What good were the trappings of royalty when there were no subjects to govern? When there were no courtiers to worship him? No games to be played, no drama to unravel. The only trick he could play was on himself.

A cold shiver descended down his spine, indifferent to his inner core of ice. He felt cold, probably for the first time in his life and he only wanted... he wanted...

Strong arms wrapped around him, encircling his torso from behind. A nameless face pressed itself into the space between his shoulder blades. Warm breath. Warm arms. Warm body. Pliable and mortal. And his.

"You are not alone," Bruce murmured into his skin, hot breath ghosting over the dark prince's shoulders, bared to the evening air, but warmed in more ways than one. "You are _not_ alone," the scientist repeated. A whisper, a promise.

Loki woke, very much alone, above the smithy. Tears filling his eyes, but not daring to spill.

****


	10. Chapter 10

  
The dream stayed with him throughout the day. It was spent in idleness with a deliberate intention to waste his time. He explored the city, pilfered some food, caused little bouts of chaos. But nothing real or substantive. The hours stalled when he wanted them to fly swiftly and bring about the night's great match within the Fighting Circle. The spectacle in Grandmaster's amphitheater. HULK vs the Tyroondian Beast. Sold out. No tickets left save the one that Loki had crafted out of thin air with the simplest bit of illusion.

The hours and the milling people were like a tide and he let himself and his thoughts be carried out to sea. He couldn't give in to the nagging feeling swelling in his chest. He wouldn't linger on the hypothetical: if _this_ green monster were not _his_ green monster. Or if he was? Something lodged in Loki's throat until he shook it aggressively away and let it whimper sullenly in a disused corner of his mind.

At long last the bright light of day receded and the sky clouded with dusk. He wandered to the arena and donned the visage of... something that tickled his fancy. The old woman. The mirage from the desert. It was an irony that he couldn't help but indulge.

The crowd pushed him along now, one body amongst thousands. His fraudulent ticket was accepted and he let it disappear on a thought. His mind was occupied elsewhere now. The crowd broke before him, scattering like sheep to their seats. He was at the edge of a balcony, far above the dusty killing field below. Even more levels rose above him, extending into the atmosphere dizzily. No one pushed or prodded at him as he gripped the rail with aged fingers, leaving the visage of the old crone alone, each spectator finding their own seats in due course. The arena was mammoth, bigger than any he'd seen the humans craft on Midgard. Bigger than even Vanaheim's championship archery grounds. He squinted to see across the space to the seats on the other side. The audience was tiny, washed out by the distance that separated each side of the great arena at this height.

Then suddenly, the massive spotlights dimmed and the crowd drew to a hush. Those remaining spectators behind him quickly found their seats. No one touched him. Loki was still bent over the rail in the guise of the old woman, sharp Jotun eyes trained on the surface far below.

The floodlights lit the ground and a projection of the Grandmaster grew in the bowl of the coliseum. The hologram was perhaps 50 or 100 times his actual height. He greeted the crowd, putting on a grand show. The benevolent dictator: providing for his people. Loki sneered. What a farce. Cruel captor, truly. Pulling a blanket over his subjects' psyches. Refusing to let them go. To let them see the great beyond, the truth of their captivity that hid behind his great lie.

The projection faded out and a slithering creature emerged on the stage from one side. It was something not unlike a Fell Hexapede and a Midgardian worm hybrid. It brandished axes in each of its several claws. From the other side of the arena, the rock creature Loki had spoken to days before walked onto the fighting field. He carried two clubs which looked far less impressive than the bulk of his own arms.

The fight began without preamble, and Loki found he was enjoying it immensely despite himself. Despite his loathing for Grandmaster, and Sakaar as a whole, and his anxious dread to see this realm's Hulk.

The rock beast was swinging with all his might, putting on a good show. Korg, was it? The hexapede was fast and deadly with his vicious blades. But they could not pierce stone skin and eventually were blunted and useless. Korg played a waiting game and at last his opponent tired. It was only a matter of time. Loki watched, lip gripped between his teeth. The blows were swift and severe and broke open the worm's carapace, splattering its intestines across the ground and all over Korg. It reached one feeble arm up in defense but the creature's death was nigh. Korg delivered the coup de grace and stood back to accept the cheers and adoration of the bloodthirsty crowd.

The anger and adrenaline was palpable in the air. Bleeding up from thousands of bodies. The hungry chant for more violence began as Korg was still taking his victory lap, painted in gore.

Hulk. Hulk. HULK. HULK! HULK!!

The Grandmaster's hologram returned then, calling out to the crowd. Appeasing them and appealing to their better nature, stoking their vicious tendencies, and generally just consuming time until the small blue slave creatures he'd seen on his first day could drag the dead carcass from the field.

What Loki assumed was the next opponent appeared on the field. The Tyroondian Beast it was named, and it bristled with midnight black fur, stalking around on its back haunches. A face of bone. Dressed for combat with dozens of spikes protruding from its armor. On its skeletal head, a helm with a single tall spike. The creature's teeth: long and razor sharp when it opened its jaws and howled. It was a sound from the depths of his dreams, from his nightmares. Something long buried and ancestral curdled in Loki's stomach at the sound and his skin goosepimpled.

What a creature. What a fiend! He was so entranced with delicious, safe, terror that he almost forgot about observing the Hulk. The Grandmaster's voice whipped the crowd into a frenzy and the far doors were flung open, a cavern of shadow behind. Loki's blood ran hot and the skin of his arms and legs buzzed with anticipatory energy. A blur of green emerged from the darkened corridor and ran onto the field. 

The new opponent wasted no time and charged at the black creature. Each beast was similarly armed with a spiked club, but they quickly discarded them in favor of using their bare hands to wreak gruesome damage. 

Loki's eyes were fast, but he wished they were faster, sharper. The green monster pulled back to survey the violence he'd wrought and the injuries suffered in their first sally. The black creature did the same. And when they parted, Loki's breath caught in his throat. 

No matter the distance, no matter the superfluous ornamentation he wore, no matter the amount of time that had passed. Loki knew. It was him! He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. His mind was caught in a deadlock, unable to function past the glory of being right, and the unadulterated exultation, and the peerless relief.

"Found you," he whispered into the air.

The green dragon - _his_ green dragon - launched back into the fray, tearing and grabbing at the other beast however he could. Separating fur from skin, armor from limbs. The movement of his verdant muscles was pure poetry. A war song made real. There was something ancient and visceral and beautiful in his barbarism. The black creature struck back with sharp claws and needle teeth. The Hulk howled as fangs sunk into his skin. Loki gasped, a shock of pain suffusing his own body. 

Blood drizzled down the Hulk's shoulder and he grasped at his opponent to throw him off, slamming the furry mass into the far wall of the stadium.

Loki held his side as he remembered to breathe again. _What was that?_ Was it the shock of discovering Banner again, against all odds? Or some sort of sympathetic phantom pain? Or had some semblance of their blood connection actually survived all this time? He looked down at his arms, still warm and buzzing with electricity. Was it the tattoos? However, he had ghosted over them with the disguise of the old woman and could not readily tell through his own illusion. 

His attention was drawn back to the stadium and fear followed the amazement Loki felt. The Hulk could be damaged by these foreign creatures. His leaking wounds made that plain. Wasn't this a fight to the death? A cold shiver trailed down his spine. The Hulk bounded towards the wall where he'd thrown his opponent. The great obsidian body fell from the crater his bulk had created. The two engaged in bloody violence again, but it slowly became clear that the Hulk was gaining the upper hand. Even with the injuries and punctures he'd sustained. 

The crowd was rabid. They were screaming his name, cheering and yowling as the green warrior stomped his Tyroondian opponent into the dust. The creature's black body was broken but the pitiful state of his enemy didn't stop Hulk. He was in a frenzy. He didn't even pause when the beast's limbs became still and limp and very clearly dead. He appeared mindless, berserk. At last, his anger finally spent, Hulk roared at the crowd. Veins bulged from his neck, an incarnation of victory. 

The crowd chanted his name over and over as Grandmaster's projection appeared above the stage. He applauded the 'peoples' champion' and the valiant fallen, and honored the crowd for attending and their continued patriotism. The thinly veiled condescension made Loki want to vomit. Only when the Hulk had safely exited the stage, did the blue slave creatures appear in order to drag away the dead competitor. The crowd didn't linger, and neither did Loki despite the appearance of some sort of aperitif: gymnastic bards took the field, retelling the stories of Hulk's greatest victories through interpretive dance.

He was _here_. Hulk. Banner. He was on Sakaar! Had the Norns sent him here in his banishment from Yggdrasil? Loki didn't pay any attention to the crush of people exiting the stadium, pulling him along with their drunken joviality. One particular man stopped and stared at Loki in fear. He was still in the guise of the old woman in the desert. But the stranger's attention could hardly break through the sorcerer's own introspective miasma.   
"Where are you headed, traveler?" he growled sardonically at the man, who flinched as if he'd seen a ghost. It didn't entertain Loki in the least. His thoughts were numb to any subject other than Banner. By the time the crowd deposited him outside the arena and began to disperse for a night of revelry, Loki had dropped the disguise and returned to his Asgardian visage.

Next steps then. Where was Banner being held between bouts? It was clearly near the Grandmaster's quarters, from the information Korg had revealed and simple logic. He was too valuable to the authoritarian to be kept anywhere else. He was a powerful symbol of the success of Sakaarian civilization and of the Grandmaster's regime. Doubtless the champion was being kept on a tight leash. Not unlike the chemical restraints Nick Fury had used on him. The way Hulk had continued to decimate his opponent's dead body was unlike the warrior Loki knew. It was disturbing and made his skin crawl. A growl escaped his throat at the thought of Fury or Grandmaster or anyone controlling Banner like a weapon again. Loki's feet carried him to the cluster of towers, mindlessly.

The Hulk was so powerful and yet Loki found himself continually tasked with saving him. First steps. Grandmaster was skilled in magic, that was plain now. The collective delusion he used to keep all these people passively captive was no mean feat. Loki couldn't risk jumping from one room in his tower to another and another without risking being found out, exposed, his strength easily measured. But there was one small move worth a risk now. Now: knowing Banner was here. He found a dark alley corner and opened a pocket portal simply into the main elevator in Grandmaster's tower. It wasn't difficult. He stepped through and the elevator was motionless, blissfully empty. The best possible outcome.

His arms and legs felt unnaturally warm again. Loki waved his hand over the sterile control surface as he remembered Topaz doing before. Marks of light flared, outlining the floors of the compound. He touched one near the base and felt his stomach drop as the lift descended. The warmth in his limbs decreased by a measure and he pushed up his sleeves to gaze upon his own tattooed skin. 

That was a clear no. Banner was not down. It felt wrong suddenly and Loki touched the control panel, pausing the lift and ascending instead. A flare shifted over the black ink that wrapped around his pale skin. Yes, up. Definitely up.

He knew it was right. Hulk was up, somewhere high in the tower. Had the magic he'd woven and impressed into his body over the past months actually worked? Could he locate the Hulk using nothing but his own wits? No witchcraft from the Norns, no magic objects, just his own flesh amplifying their blood connection? It was an electric idea. He had become his own lodestone. 

No wonder then, that his craft hadn't worked back in Asgard, with an immeasurable distance separating them. But it was working now. At least he surmised so.

Then, he might be able to refine it. Yes, he would bind the two of them so tightly that no god or demon or even _fate_ itself would separate them again.

When the lift doors opened, Grandmaster appeared in front of Loki. He struggled to keep the shock from his face.

"Asgard! So _good_ to see you." Loki quickly brushed his sleeves back down his own arms, covering the tattoos and anything they might inadvertently reveal to this stealthy imp. "Have you decided to take me up on my offer after all? Come back to join my court?"

Loki covered over the mix of vivid emotions he was feeling in a millisecond. Revulsion, fear, anger, frustration. His peerless mask returned and a smile settled over his features.  
"Alas, you see right through me. Sakaar is a wonderful place, but not without its - ah - _challenges_." Loki stepped further back into the elevator at the Grandmaster's nod and the two men continued upwards in the lift. "Is the offer still valid?"  
"Hmm," the dictator pretended to ponder. Oh, he was preening now, certainly. A successful Fight Night, the 'adoration' of his 'people', fresh affirmation of his position as cherished leader. He looked Loki up and down, gaze lingering. "I think I can make an exception. I'm usually not rebuffed, you know. _You_ are an exception. And exceptional. My court is open to you once again. But-" He let the 't' click against his tongue, drawing the syllable out. "Cross me again? I don't give third chances to anyone, even someone as intriguing as you." His cold eyes pierced Loki and the doors of the elevator opened behind them, offering a welcome escape.

Grandmaster turned and exited and beckoned Loki to follow him. He did so, wordlessly, eyes boring holes in the back of his coiffed head. He led them down a short hallway to a room decorated like a lounge. All plush chairs and chaises and deep burgundy colors punctuated by cream and gold trim. The smell was back. A rich honeyed perfume that seemed... so fake? Was all this some elaborate illusion? Varnish laid thickly over a framework of paper and straw?

Grandmaster relaxed back on one chaise and curled his finger in Loki's direction, gazing at him through heavily-lidded eyes. He felt his stomach turn to ice and steeled himself. He was no stranger to the more coarse games of politics. Physical quid pro quo. Grandmaster had something or rather someone he wanted, _badly_. And Grandmaster wanted something in turn as well. Loki.

Loki drifted to the couch and sat down stiffly. Knowing how the game was played and being a veteran player didn't necessarily make the moves any easier to make.  
"Don't worry, doll," the silver-haired man cupped Loki's chin in one long-fingered hand. "I haven't had the pleasure of a chase in a very long time. And I _intend_ to chase you. It will make the payout even sweeter." His eyes were intense and intrusive and at last he pulled his hand away from the demi-god's face and sat back. Loki released a breath he didn't know he was holding.

"So, let's play a game instead." He snapped his fingers and two blue creatures skittered out from nowhere, offering glasses of liquor to the two men, shuffling back into the walls without a word. "Tell me five things I don't know about you, and one thing no one knows about you." He grinned at his own game and began to sip from his glass. "Cat got your tongue?"

"Hardly. I simply don't see the point. What do I stand to gain by telling you all my secrets?"  
"I didn't say secrets. You implied it," Grandmaster scoffed, lounging back and swilling the drink heavily. A creature ran out to refill his glass. "Conversation: a universal social _lubricant_." He accented the last word heavily. Loki knew exactly what was being implied now. "As well as this." The tyrant raised his chalice in a mock toast.

Loki sighed. He would have to play the game to stall for time. Time to find Banner. Time to strategize their escape. Find a way back to Asgard.  
"The first thing you don't know about me..." He regarded his glass. "Is that I despise the liquor in this realm. It is sickly sweet and noxious and contains none of the fine characteristics of the mead of Asgard or certain Midgardian whiskeys." Both men continued to sip at their drinks, regardless.   
" _Boooring_. We'll have to find something else that pleases your tongue." Grandmaster raised an eyebrow solicitously. "Perhaps we can waste a few days that way. That actually would be fun." His smile grew, though fortunately not cruelly and Loki was tempted to release part of the breath he seemed to perpetually hold in his presence.

"Second: there are some languages here I don't understand. It's unexpected. They call me the Silvertongue because I'm such a gifted linguist," he added by way of explanation. What Grandmaster didn't know wouldn't hurt him.  
"Which ones?" The other man drew his elbows to his knees sitting up, intrigued.  
"I..." Loki struggled to fill in the gaps. There truly were some creatures here whose language the All Speak could not translate. But which could hurt him to admit to the Grandmaster? Actually, why admit anything when he could lie instead? "I saw a rock creature and could not understand it. There was a child, face painted green, babbling on. I can't keenly remember any others."

"What's your number three?" Grandmaster was again lounging, eyes lidded, glass being refilled by his blue slave creatures. He was drinking to celebrate, and heavily. Loki considered what to tell him. He had an impulse to bear his forearms and show him the tattoos of his own creation, but that would be a suicidal move.  
"I'm quite a skilled story teller. If I hear a tale once I can repeat it back for eons."  
"Again, boring. _What_ are you hiding from me? Tell me something juicy."  
"I was at the fight tonight." That caught the erstwhile god's attention.   
"Hmm... Tell me, what did you think of my little spectacle?"  


"It was impressive," Loki pandered. "I was rooting for the hexapede creature and the Tyroodian, so I can't say that my favorites won, but it was a frightful and entertaining spectacle in all." Loki leered at the other man, letting a shadow of his textbook grin appear on his face. A tease. An entreaty. "I have to say, it got my blood racing."  
"Did it, now?" Grandmaster's face broke into a sly grin. "Alright, what's number five then?" he pressed.  
"The brother I told you about earlier? He is likely no longer alive." That wasn't a joyous thought after all. A shadow passed over Loki's face despite his attempts to retain neutrality. But he didn't linger on it. Grandmaster's glass was filled for a fourth time while Loki was still nursing his first. The liquor truly was sub-par.

"Hmm. That's sad. But. What's one thing _no one_ knows about you?" Grandmaster's eyes were alight, a little glossy from the beverages. Perhaps there was some flaw to this dictator's divinity after all.  
"One thing no one knows about me?" Loki pretended to ponder, dragging out the moment. His mutinous brain returned to the idea of Thor, dead. The level of liquid in Grandmaster's glass shrank once again. "I can think of one thing that only one other person knows about me. Well, perhaps two. No: three, counting you. Provided the other isn't dead. Which of course, he may be." Bor, who knew what Hela had done to the big blonde oaf after she'd knocked Loki into the tide of the Bifrost. Thor could be dead, given Hela's demonstration of power through her decimation of Mjolnir. If so, she was the last family he had. That train of thought didn't bear pursuing now. He shook his head lightly to clear it and bring him back to the game at hand. 

"The sister I told you about. No one knows about her. I didn't either. She is elder by far. We had never met before. And now that my father and mother are dead... and likely my brother too... only she and I and you are aware of her existence. _This_ you do not know: she is the Queen of Death." Loki took a long sip from his own glass, his tastebuds dulled and dead. Half for show, half to give his mouth something to do to fill the silence after his uncomfortable admission and the strange thoughts swirling in his brain. 

If Thor was dead, and Hela alive, what did that mean for Asgard? She had crushed his great hammer like a brittle pastry between her fingers. The same hammer that had confounded Loki and brought armies to their knees. The sorcerer pulled on his bottom lip, uncertain how to process this information. He hadn't really thought about it since his first night on Sakaar. 

"Sounds like your classic sibling rivalry. But with mommie and daddie dearest dead, who's going to rein her in?" Hearing Frigga referred to so callously made a grimace descend onto Loki's face unconsciously. The gall of this creature... "Sorry, muffin bear. I mean, _okay_ your sister is the Queen of Death. What does that even mean? Did she kill your parents? What kind of chip is on her shoulders? Did she go through an angsty teenage phase? Oh, _oh, oh!_ Is she looking for work?! I could totally use someone on my payroll that calls themselves the 'Queen of Death', oh _yeah_." 

The Grandmaster's manic mood did not impress Loki in the least, so he said as gracefully as he could: "I'm afraid that's more than one question. We'll have to continue another night, your _eminence_." It was a tad snarky, but Grandmaster didn't seem able to tell or to care.  
"Right, right, righty-o. _Topaz!_ " he called. "Ginger! Spotty? Someone show his royal highness Muffin Butt of Ass-guard to his quarters." A small blue creature scurried to crouch at his shoes. "The same rooms as before," the tyrant instructed. The creature nodded and turned to Loki to guide him to his guest quarters. But Grandmaster was on his feet first, steady in spite of all the liquor he'd imbibed. He stared down at Loki, still seated, and grasped his pale chin gently between his long fingers, voice suddenly sober.

"This was a good start. A pleasant evening, pleasant company. Dinner tomorrow evening. That's mandatory. Until then, lose yourself in whatever... delightful distractions you desire." The lewd smile grew on his face again. He leaned down to place a light, chaste kiss on Loki's lips and Loki let him. The alternative wasn't worth it. Rebuffing the Grandmaster now would hardly get him what he wanted. Which was time alone. To find Bruce. To find a way out. "Sleep tight, Asgard. Aaaand don't go above the 591st floor. Anything else is fine, but above there is off limits on pain of..." he stared into space, pondering and failing to assemble a cogent threat. "...pain."

Loki stood wordlessly, nodded his departure to the self-crowned god, and followed the small scared blue butler down the hall.

****


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went quite a bit out of my comfort zone on this chapter and you may find Loki a bit OOC, but I think it fits the character arc he's gone through so far between this fic and last and what's in store for him soon. I hope you like it?
> 
> More to come!

  
Nothing above the 591st floor? Loki didn't doubt that's where Banner was. After all, the tattoos painted into his arms had warmed the higher he'd risen. But they were only on floor 525 now. The small creature motioned over the controls, embedded flush into the side of the elevator. The floor dropped out from beneath Loki's feet as the elevator began to move. He barely had time to note the change in the energy enveloping his arms and legs. As they descended, he seemed to move _closer_ to the Hulk. The ink on his pale skin was quite buzzing with electricity. 

The doors opened on floor 501. These nondescript halls seemed familiar. They grew more so as the tottering blue creature led him back to the exact same set of doors that Topaz had deposited him at several days prior. 

"Your quarters, sir," the servant squeaked as the doors opened on Loki's lush vacant rooms and he turned to go. The sorcerer made a show of walking through the doors and letting them close behind him before he began to summon energy around his body. If his movements were being recorded, and he was fairly certain that was the case, it was in his best interest to show Grandmaster he had retreated to his chambers like a good and contrite prisoner-guest. But now that he was alone, it was time to go on the offensive.

Loki crafted a clone and set him upon the expansive bed, staring pensively out at the horizon. It wouldn't fool a wielder of magic, but it would confuse most who might come to randomly inspect Loki's status. Then he opened a portal directly back to the elevator and silently stepped through.

There was no one in the elevator now, and for that he breathed a sigh of relief, but he cloaked himself in a shroud of invisibility all the same.

Down. Something - maybe a compassionate god, maybe some deep Jotun instinct, maybe the magic that ran along his skin - told him Banner was on a floor below. Loki's confidence grew as the surface rose to meet him.

Floor 497. 450. 378. 321. 289. No, too far.

Loki stopped the elevator and the doors opened on an empty hall. He pushed a button at random. Floor 303? It felt right for some reason.

The doors opened. Again, on nothing. But he strode forward into the blank corridor all the same.

The air was pungent on floor 303. Filled not with the perfumery of Grandmaster's quarters, or the sweat-smell of the streets of Sakaar, or the acrid taste of fear and blood that weighted arena's air. No, here was the smell of spices and woolen blankets. The smell of a life lived. A smell that said someone had made this ridiculous place their home.

There wasn't any real reason for it, but Loki's pulse accelerated as he walked the empty halls. No guards, no butlers, no servants. Only one Asgardian king, invisible, and the cloying sense of pervasive habitation.

He turned a last corner and found the end of the hallway. A room shrouded in darkness. His ears twitched, searching. Great slow breaths filled the air. A sleeper, dreaming carelessly, soundly.

His frost giant eyes quickly adjusted to the night and Loki found himself staring at the outline of a sleeping Hulk. Banner's green form was gargantuan and tucked upon himself on a platform that was more a cushioned stage than any bed he'd seen in his long life.

_Banner._

He hadn't reverted to his human form after the battle. The green dragon slumbered, but Loki's heart clenched in triumph all the same. He'd _found_ him. Fie on the Norns! Fate be damned! Divine subjugation? He _spat_ in its great eye. There were no superstitions, no omnipotence that held sway over him now. His lungs and his pride swelled and he crept forward, drawn to the beast on the tips of his toes.

The gentle snores that emanated from his dragon were titanic, echoing off the walls. It was... novel? Strange? He wouldn't go so far as to describe them as adorable, but they were an unusual event and Loki locked the sight and the sounds away in his memory to dissect later.

How would he wake the beast? If it were Banner, he would simply cut across the space, grasp him by the shoulders, press him forcefully into the sheets, and devour his face starting with his lips down until the mortal was gasping for breath. Loki was pierced through the chest by the powerful imagery and his fingers clutched uselessly at empty air. 

No, he certainly couldn't accost the Hulk in the same manner. He would have to wake him like a newborn babe or a resting demon. With song? It was sufficiently gentle and noninvasive. Loki began to murmur the first thing that passed through his mind. 

"He rode onto the hills, he wished to see his wife..." How did the song go again?   
"...he was forbade to visit her, and so he took his life." Loki crept forward on soft soles as he continued, stretching into vague and distant memory for the melody.   
"Oh lady, lady, why did you sleep so long? Why did you sleep so long?" He let his voice grow by drops, patient as sand on a beach.   
"The choir long in Trondheim, sang a hymn loud and clear, it clawed unto the mountain top, and heaven could not bear." Loki watched as the Hulk's eyes darted behind his closed eyelids, stuttering slowly into wakefulness. Slowly was good. Slowly was safe.   
"Oh lady, lady, why did you sleep so long? Oh, why oh why? Why did you sleep so long?" He reached one tentative pale hand out to brush the curly fringe from Hulk's face. The tattoos on Loki's arms vibrated with energy and warmth. With the throaty feel of success. With connection to the being he'd sought after so long. The beast's eyes opened at once. He fixed Loki with a gripping stare, pupils constricting, processing the image in front of his sleepy gaze. Determining if it was foe or friend in a fraction of a second.

"Puny god?"  
"Yes, it's me. I _found_ you." Loki couldn't stop the smile that split his face. He stretched his fingers again to the green face, but the monster's undimmed grimace stayed his pale hand and the smile faded. He was fixed by a monstrously frustrated frown, which on anyone else would be a terrifying scowl.  
"Banner screaming. Screaming and _screaming._ And you left. And Banner keep screaming."

"I didn't leave," Loki protested. Screaming? A cold chill ran down his spine. "I would _never_ have left. The Norns pulled you bodily from Midgard." He looked away, still ashamed of his inability to control the situation then. "I couldn't stop them. I couldn't even have kept them from killing you, if they'd wanted."  
"Hulk not remember that. Only Banner _screaming_." He reached one great green hand across the bed to a massive pillow, gripping it between his fingers and tearing it in half in impotent frustration. "Banner screamed so long. So much worse than screaming in space." The demi-god remembered, connecting the dots. It had been half a dream, half a nightmare. Bruce's reaction in front of the Norns at finding out the boy he'd murdered by negligence was not just his student, but his own son. _His only son._ The sound of screams had echoed off the cave walls and torn the heart from Loki's chest, even as cold and dead and black as it was. Remembering now was only half as hard.

"I'm sorry. I couldn't do anything then." Loki finally settled one hand on top of Hulk's gigantic fist. "Let me fix it now," he entreated. "I'll do my best. I'll make him stop screaming."  
"Banner not scream now. Hulk make him stop." The green beast huffed in finality, in success. Was there a note of desperation to his exhalation? Loki might've imagined it.  
"You _made_ him stop? How?" Suddenly, he didn't think he wanted the answer.

"Hulk push Banner down. Deep down. Weak Man stay down. Stay silent. Hulk happy now." No, that didn't sound good at all.  
"You _pushed_ him down? Where? Into your mind?" But Hulk would say no more. He laid back down and rolled over, pointedly putting his back to the sorcerer. The thought of a creature as blunt and brutal as Hulk performing a mental feat that demanded discerning finesse and skill made Loki shudder internally. The psychic equilibrium between Bruce and Hulk was an unknown quantity, but he imagined it was a fine and fractious balance. Loki remembered the black chaotic field of their shared mind when he'd suspended them in the void at Midgard's Lagrange point. So long also. So very, very long ago.

He imagined the green beast's efforts to 'push Banner down' were as graceful as a dancer weighed down with stone shoes. Or as kindly performed as manic killer wielding the fine destructive focus of the Bifrost on an unsuspecting populace.

Well. That _had_ happened... And look how it had turned out.

"Hulk." He tried a patient, even tone. "Explain it to me. Banner was screaming and you made him stop?" 

Silence.

He changed tactics.   
"Why haven't you reverted to your human form? After tonight's fight? Where is Bruce?"  
"Bruce is gone," the muffled response terrified Loki to his core.  
"Gone?" he scoffed. That wasn't possible. They shared a body. A mind, somehow: split down the middle and pulling itself apart at the edges. But, no Banner couldn't be gone. It made no sense. He wouldn't even entertain the ridiculous idea. "That's not possible, he's a pa-"  
"Go _away_ ," the great beast huffed, interrupting Loki. No one interrupted Loki?! It gave the dark god pause, and he was stuck between syllables, mouth gaping uselessly. When he finally thought to shut it, he was stunned. 

Banner could not have simply disappeared or dissolved. It wasn't possible.

The sorcerer reached out one hand to touch the dragon, now fallen back into his deep slumber. But his fingers were motionless, rebellious. His palm hovered over the green skin, failing to make contact, failing to reassure his own brain that everything would be okay in the end. Would it?

Loki tore himself away from the tableau that he'd searched after for so long. Hulk, Banner, Bruce: dozing contentedly, seemingly safe. But he was haunted by the green monster's words. Bruce had been screaming. And screaming so long and so loud that Hulk had forced the scientist quiet. Separated them? Suffocated Bruce? It didn't stand to contemplate and yet the evidence was right there, sleeping away, still transformed. He was only mere floors below him now as Loki teleported back to his quarters directly, avoiding the risk of the elevator.

The Hulk had not faded away as he usually did after such a massive outlay of strength and energy. A fight like the one earlier this evening should have seen him revert to his small, mortal form as normal. But no.

Loki took a deep breath and physically shut down all the scrabbling anxieties. He stamped down the blind terror and the nagging pain in his chest that he'd found Banner only to lose him again. 

No, this was simply a mystery to be solved. A problem to be set right. He sat on the floor of his quarters and closed his eyes, drawing a sheltering bubble around himself. There was a fight ahead, but its form eluded him. He needed to muse on this strange turn of events and build power for what lay next. And plot. It was what he did best. There must be a way around this. A way to pull Banner back. 

The bubble kept out prying eyes and ears and magic. He'd done it before. It was a simple trick. The sphere let him manifest his energy unobserved, circling around his arms and his torso and legs. Streaks of glowing, flickering light wove into the inked flesh he'd already spilled across his skin, making each rune and pattern darker, more definite. Stronger.

When the time came - and Loki knew it would - he would not be caught off step.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics: based loosely on Bendik and Årolilja (Norse folk song).


	12. Chapter 12

Loki came out of his meditative trance with a gasp. He was still alone in his quarters and the bubble he'd constructed was as strong as ever.

He was safe. Relatively.

Sweat beaded on his forehead and soaked the back of his tunic. He was out of breath and half exhausted. But he knew the answer. It was so simple! He knew now how to reach Banner through the impenetrable shell of the Hulk.

When Thor and Fury had sprung Loki from Asgard's dungeons and entreated him to extract the Hulk from his unstoppable rampage, he'd pulled him to the Lagrange point between Midgard and its moon. The Hulk was at Loki's mercy then, unable to fight back against his psychic onslaught. He'd wielded Helgrid's signet and his own potent magic, and forcibly melded their minds together.

Granted, he had none of that now. The Hulk was lucid and well in control of his faculties. There was no method to pull him away from the Grandmaster's sticky embrace and keep him enthralled for any measure of time. He didn't have the signet, and none of the items he'd pilfered from Odin's treasure vaults could help him in this endeavor. But he did have their connection still, forged in blood. Hulk's blood mixed in his veins. And Loki's blood was part of Hulk even now.

He'd been studiously practicing ancient magic while ruling on Asgard. He'd built up his reserves of power and even expanded them a bit. He was, undoubtedly, the most powerful he'd felt in years. Decades. Centuries. Perhaps ever.

And Loki knew something novel now. Hulk slept like the dead. It was a worthy gamble to try piercing his slumber. Would his dreams peel back like the skin of a ripe fruit? 

His gaze darted to the windows that wrapped around his expansive guest quarters. It was still dark outside, but the sky was beginning to gray with the promise of the strange Sakaarian dawn. The outline of the massive cataract linking the surface to the sky was barely visible, debris pouring down in an infinite fountain. He estimated there was maybe one or two hours left in the night. It was sufficient for a first try.

Loki dropped the bubble and set a clone in his place. He watched the conjuration walk over to the bed, lay down, and affect sleep. Satisfied, he stood from his meditative repose, pictured Hulk's quarters and teleported himself back to the room he'd left hours before. The giant beast still slept, small uneven snores telling the tale of his dreams.

Would it require physical contact? Or could he walk into their shared consciousness without disturbing the angry monster before him? Loki worried his bottom lip between his teeth in uncharacteristic indecision. He couldn't risk waking him. At least not yet. It was apparent that Hulk was determined to keep Banner silent. The last thing Loki needed was the beast directing his limitless anger at the sorcerer.

He pulled a protective bubble around the two of them to shut out the outside world. Better to be cautious. Loki closed his eyes and matched the rhythm of Hulk's breathing with his own. He then sent a tendril of power from his upturned palms to wind into the caverns of the beast's ears, into his nostrils. Further: threading into his mind. Loki could feel when the power he'd loosed latched onto something tangible in Hulk's dreaming brain and pulled his psyche under.

***

Loki was aware of nothing but a white expanse. Featureless. 

No up, no down. Fathomless. No near and no far. 

He spun around in a circle while his frustrated gaze failed to lock onto anything at all. It was simply a white void.

That wasn't a good sign. He continued to survey the absence of anything that stretched all around him. But there was something there. A presence, a ghost? It was chilling, to feel a touch at your back and pivot and identify absolutely nothing at all.

The third or fourth time he'd turned, Loki finally spotted something in the place where nothing had been just a moment before. It was a flickering image, like an electric display on Midgard malfunctioning. Or a brittle icy fog from Jotunheim brushing over a frozen lake. He approached it on silent feet. It came to his waist and appeared ephemeral, gauzy, without form or substance.

As he stared, his quick mind put a pattern to the chaos. A body. Crouched. Head... in its hands? It was hard to decipher and for a moment he thought it was Banner, but he shook his head, clearing it of the vision it most desired. He had only wished it was Banner, and so it was.

But no, it was more like a collection of stones. Silent, flickering in and out of existence. He was captivated by it simply for the fact that there was nothing else to stare at in this brilliant void.

And then suddenly... it wasn't a pile of rocks. It wasn't a formless collection of fog and color. It _was_ Banner. It really was. But the man was silent and motionless like a patchwork painting struggling to find footing in the realm of the living. The image of the scientist clutched his head in his hands, back bowed, arched in on himself. A silent picture of pain: physical or mental or perhaps both. Loki reached out to touch the flickering image and it shattered like glass. His connection with the Hulk was severed and Loki was suddenly, painfully, back in his own body in the darkened room on Sakaar.

But the Hulk was still sleeping. Thank you, Idunn. And Loki's defensive bubble was still intact. There was no one in the darkened chambers but him and the great beast.

Fate smiled on him. So he took a deep breath and tried again.

***

The white void enveloped him once again. And again, the flickering image appeared. Rather than touch it and break the spell, the demi-god tried something original. Using magic within a dream. Could it be done? He felt the itch of power through his fingers just at the first thought of it, and then directed the idea outwards towards the image of Banner. He pushed energy into the mirage and simultaneously probed for something tangible, something he could pull towards himself. 

It felt like a tedious game of tug of war played with the god of patience over a thick rope of syrup. But slowly, the image's spasms diminished and the shape took form. Banner, doubled on himself, grasping his head in his hands once more. 

Loki walked around the image to find it had form. It wasn't like a painting anymore, it was a statue. He pivoted to find Bruce's face and his breath caught, slightly horrified. His brown eyes were unblinking, caught in a moment in time. Wide open and filled with a depthless sadness that flowed through his every feature. His slumped shoulders. His parted lips, as if caught in the middle of a sigh that hope had utterly abandoned. His curls, the curls that Loki admitted to himself he'd missed so much, grasped between claw-like fingers that had nothing else left to hold onto. 

He was the absolute image of despair and Loki couldn't stop the reflex in his hands, reaching out to touch him, to bring some modicum of solace, however futile and pitiful. The image fractured as before and Loki cursed himself for repeating the same careless mistake. He was pulled back to his body, still standing in Hulk's room.

Only now, dawn had touched the sky with a blush of brightness and the Hulk's snores were turning to sniffles and coughs. A universal hallmark of the blanket of sleep being pulled back and lucidity returning.

Loki decided not to take his medicine and instead wisely fled back to his room to muse on his successes and failures and plan for the dreadful day ahead.

***


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things have been pretty placid so far...  
> Heads up, this chapter is the first (of several) that earn this fic its Explicit rating.

  
The day, he decided, was better spent in spycraft than in self-pity. Loki conjured a clone to remain in his quarters and instructed it respond to all inquiries with vagaries and non-committal answers. Simple. Then he cast himself directly back to floor 303, cloaked in invisibility. Hulk had woken and was amusing himself by tossing breakable objects around his room.

A parade of small blue servant creatures appeared in Hulk's quarters over the next quarter of an hour while Loki bided his time, invisible, patient, watching. He knew the great green behemoth would not be happy with Loki's return after last evening's encounter. He was content for now to slouch against one wall, drinking his fill of the image of Banner's monstrous other half, waiting for some information to appear that he could use to design a way out of this whole mess.

The blue servants scurried about, keeping away from Hulk's feet and out of easy reach of his arms. They tidied what had been strewn around the room and brought plates of food, half of which ended up being tossed aside rather than eaten. They cleaned up the broken items with a practiced efficiency. As if this temper tantrum was simply normal Hulk behavior.

Footsteps at the entrance made Loki crook his neck to find a dark skinned woman approaching. She was not unlike Samara, but with braids down her back, superior armor, and a military posture that belied her unconcerned swagger.  
"Angry Girl!" Hulk bellowed. But it wasn't anger that colored his voice, it was happiness. Of a sort. Strange.

"Hulk!" she stepped into his embrace and he lifted her off the floor, tossing her up and over his shoulder. She spun and landed gracefully on her feet. "Ready to spar today? You were beat up a fair bit last night."  
"Hulk always ready. Never miss match with Angry Girl. Hulk not weak." He seemed to pout? That was unusual. Hulk could display more emotions than just anger?  
"I know. I know. Hulk is never weak. But that Tyroondian was one bad customer." She trailed a hand over a green arm absently, without any real intention or thought. Hulk's reaction went unnoticed by everyone except Loki. An imperceptible flinch. Goosepimples on his skin. A soft curl at the edges of his lips. 

Unmistakable.

"Angry Girl not worry about Hulk. Hulk win." She grinned at his confidence and bluster.  
"Alright. Good. Then I won't go easy on you today." She punched him lightly and sprang for the door past the spot where Loki stood, invisible still. Hulk scrambled back to his feet and rambled after, dragging a large hammer to match her weathered club. Loki was alone again, unable to muster the energy to follow them.

He could see it now. Hulk had a reason to push Banner down. More than simply to stop him from screaming. He was keen on the strange woman who spent her time sparring with him. And what else? Was she in Grandmaster's employ? Was she a guard like Topaz, or a bounty hunter like Samara? Or something else altogether?

By Ymir... she seemed familiar too. It nagged in the back of Loki's mind, but he couldn't piece it together.

Hulk. In love? No, _impossible_. But certainly he was fond of her in an entirely unexpected way.

A sudden and vicious jealously wrapped around his throat, squeezing until he saw red.

Loki teleported back to his quarters, dissolved the clone, and began to pace. Banner was his and by extension Hulk, too. No unobservant wench could usurp his place. It was unthinkable. Impermissible. He had to get to Banner, and quickly. Now it wasn't simply his own freedom, and Bruce's, and Thor's relative well-being, and the safety of Asgard. Now his claim to the green dragon was at stake as well. 

But Loki could only access Bruce in dreams, for now. And even that was a stretch. There was nothing to do until nightfall except stew and froth. The demi-god set out into the city to cause general chaos and discord instead. Something halfway approximating productivity. 

***

When the evening darkness had crept over the city like smothering drapery, Loki returned to the tower. It was late enough that the good people of Sakaar were sleeping and likely Grandmaster too. The dining hour had passed, the wining hour had passed, and only sentries now occupied the hallway outside Loki's quarters. He could set up a sleeping clone in his bed and spirit himself down to floor 303 to renew his rescue on Banner's mind with minimal interference.

But as he stepped through the door, Loki's plans fell to pieces. Grandmaster was sitting on the edge of his divan: empty glass in hand, eyes glassy from drink.

"And thus, he appears," he twirled his open hand in the air elegantly. "Where have you been all day, darling? I 'fired' some 'prisoners-with-jobs' earlier and I thought you'd want to watch. It was delightfully disgusting. You missed all the _fun_." The man pouted heavily, eyes licking up and down Loki's form.

"My apologies, Grandmaster," Loki bent at the waist in mock supplication, keeping his gaze fixed on the imp before him as one would a wild beast. "But, as you agreed, I'm not prisoner here, but rather a guest. I simply spent my day in the city, finding..." he allowed a small and entirely fictional smile to creep into the corner of his mouth, "some entertaining diversions." 

The smile felt like acid on his lips. All he wanted was to get to Banner now. Why waste time and energy and effort in absolutely any other pursuit? But he had to devise a way to get out of the dictator's presence first.

"A guest you are. That's true." He wound the air lazily around one outstretched finger before thrusting it accusingly in Loki's direction. "However, I asked one thing of you. No, not asked. Commanded." His eyes were sharp now and his voice flinty. "Dinner. With me, tonight. Which you have _regrettably_ missed." Loki couldn't stop himself from swallowing around the lump that formed in his throat. He knew the man was a master of magic and a little drunk. And had been, by his own admission, on a recent homicidal binge. As the door opened unexpectedly behind him, Loki swiveled hard, anticipating an attack. But it was not an assailant, it was only another small blue creature, carrying a plate of fruits and two glasses of liquor.

"Ah! About time, shorty," the ruler snapped. "See, Asgard: we can dine together after all." Loki settled onto the divan in defeat. There was no short game to get out of this predicament. But maybe there was a way to move it along. One that would put the reins in his hands instead of constantly remaining two steps behind Grandmaster.

The despot plucked one of the grape-like fruits from the platter as the small blue creature scurried out of the room. He ate it quickly before grabbing another and offering it to Loki between the tips of his fingers. The tyrant arched one eyebrow at him, brooking no argument: eat the grape. Eat it from his hand or face his petulant wrath.

No, there was another option. Loki picked up a grape and offered it to Grandmaster in turn, mirroring the other man.  
"I'm positively stuffed," he explained. "Dinner in the city, you understand. Couldn't eat a bite myself. But... don't let _me_ stop _you_." Loki's tone was cultivated, sultry, intended to entice Grandmaster even as the trickster grasped tenuous control of the situation.

Grandmaster hummed in contemplation but didn't say a word as he lowered his mouth to Loki's outstretched hand and ate the grape, dragging slack lips over pale fingers as he began to chew.  
"Asgard, you surprise me. _No one_ has dared to demand anything of me in..." he stared into space as he contemplated, "I forget how long. Well, at least without losing their head in the process." His mouth curled at his own joke, but the despot remained jovial, intrigued. "This is... a delicious proposition. I'll play along for now," he nodded. Sitting back once more and waiting for Loki to make the next move.

The trickster picked up another grape and offered it again to Grandmaster. This was an acceptable turn of events. It was a transaction now. An exchange of time for intimacy, and Loki was firmly in control. He could make it work. He _would_ make it work. And then he could return to the business of freeing Banner from the Hulk's psychic prison.

Grandmaster opened his mouth to eat the fruit, but Loki drew back at the last minute and the silver haired man was left with his jaws hanging open ridiculously. Loki smoothed the grape's chilled skin over Grandmaster's open lips slowly, deliberately, before placing it inside his mouth and letting him suck on one long slender digit. The creature's breathing had slowed and his eyes were on fire.

"Ohhhh, I like this game. You _do_ know how to play it well." The sharpness had dropped out of Grandmaster's voice, leaving only a deep, eager baritone.  
"No more talking," Loki snapped, plucking another fruit and holding it at arm's length out over the floor. The ravenous gleam in Grandmaster's eyes told Loki he was driving in the right direction: humiliating and subjugating the man who traded in power and flesh and pain.

Grandmaster had to stretch to reach the grape, clinging to the divan with his hands and feet, neck exposed and straining to meet the fruit with his mouth. It was delightful to watch him struggle, and Loki knew his internal entertainment was built on his own deep personal flaws. But he didn't care.

What was the next move? He had to up the ante again. Loki removed one shoe and set a grape on the ground with intentionality in each movement. He lifted his foot and crushed the grape between his bare toes before locking eyes with the tyrant. The god of lies only arched an expectant eyebrow when Grandmaster paused and glanced at him in disbelief. The coldness of Loki's eyes was answer enough. They had each built the rules of this game with their mutual consent. There was only one way out: down.

Grandmaster slid off the divan and dropped his head to the floor obediently. His elbows bent to angle himself down to Loki's foot like a big cat at a watering hole. But there was no sustenance here, only debasement. He began to lick the ruined grape from Loki's toes without hesitation, only relish. He sucked at the remains and tongued over the ends of his feet. The demi-god couldn't deny the electric effect the humiliation had on him as blood pooled in his own groin. The power he held in this tenuous moment was intoxicating.

Grandmaster began to sit up, but Loki gripped the top of his head, pushing the man back down.  
"There's still juice on the floor," he intoned coldly. A visible shudder of pleasure ran the length of Grandmaster's body, and he willingly sank again to his hands, licking over the smooth tile surface and around and underneath each of Loki's toes until no trace of the fruit remained.

Absolutely delicious.

He allowed the ruler to climb back onto the divan once more, where Loki was unabashedly rubbing the growing bulge in his pants.  
"I'm done with the fruit," he stated the obvious. "Get back on the floor. On your knees." Grandmaster opened his mouth to protest, but Loki cut him off sharply, eyes slitted. "No talking, remember? Kneel: or this game ends." Once again, the reaction was visible, Grandmaster's eyes dilating and his skin turning flush. For a being who could only dominate, all day, every day, the idea of being unquestioningly submissive was a release, a siren call. Exotic and forbidden. He sank willingly into position and began to work at loosening then opening Loki's trousers.

There were no more words now for either of them: Loki too far gone, beaten by his own game, devouring the thrill of domination as it surged through his veins. He gripped the top of Grandmaster's head in fingers shaped like talons, bruising the skin underneath, guiding him to his undeniable erection which bobbed eagerly in the chill air of the room. It was only a moment's suffering he had to endure before the dictator took his length eagerly between his lips, enveloping Loki in warmth and wetness and showing him how truly far he was willing to go to act out this fantasy.

Loki swallowed a gasp as the creature continued to work. He couldn't show weakness or the game would be undone. The control he'd built would be wiped away and this would not be a political maneuver, but a mere tawdry dalliance, a simple rutting of animals. A wasteful diversion from his true purpose, rather than a calculated step in his plan. But... _Oh, by Idunn_... It was amazing. Pleasure coursed through his body from the top of his head to the ends of his toes. He bit down hard on his bottom lip to capture a moan, and his own blood leaked down his chin.

"Touch yourself," Loki managed to order through gritted teeth, his voice retaining its demanding sharpness by sheer will of effort. Grandmaster took himself in his free hand as instructed, without pausing his oral ministrations, and Loki knew his success was close. With the ruler satiated too, he would be freed of the burden to reciprocate or to engage any further this evening. He could simply get back to his plans.

With the thought of victory in mind, and the vicious creature kneeling below him working his own cock furiously, and a warm eager mouth enveloping him in totality: Loki finally let go and gave into the pleasure of unblemished, albeit temporary, ecstasy.

***


	14. Chapter 14

  
Loki's eyes stretched to the blue horizon. His feet were bare, encapsulated in damp warm sand. The beach was immaculate and empty. Perfect. As with all dreams, it defied reality. Birds with pure white feathers were suspended on the air currents above, their calls mimicking the cries of newborn babies.

There was no one else around until suddenly, there was. Bruce. 

The sun was hot on his face despite a crispness in the air. Bruce's short hair was tossed in the wind as he walked down the shore towards Loki. He approached without a word, but his mahogany eyes drilled into Loki's. His gaze was piercing and his breath caught in his lungs. Idunn, it had been _so long_ since Bruce had stared at him like this. The trickster opened his mouth to speak, but Bruce was first.

And when he opened his mouth, no sound escaped. 

Was it Loki's hearing that had failed? But the birds in the air were still calling, still crying like babes for their fathers. And the waves on the shore were still crashing, filling the atmosphere with sound. It was only Bruce, then. Speaking in words without form.

"I- I can't hear you," he tried feebly. But Bruce would not be interrupted. He kept on speaking, carrying on some pleasant conversation soundlessly. His face conveyed no emotion or meaning, just simple placidity. There was nothing to be ventured from his body language or the shapes his lips formed. It was if he was within a protective bubble speaking some tongue that defied the All Speak.

"Bruce: stop and try again. I can't hear you." But Bruce couldn't seem to hear him either, and he simply continued with his one sided conversation. "No, I _can't hear you_. Can you hear me? Bruce. _Bruce!_ "

Loki grabbed the soundless man by the shoulders out of frustration and shook him violently, as if to remove him from the clutches of a trance or a curse. But nothing changed, the doctor continued to mouth soundless words without any reaction or emotion. The demi-god screamed in his face, frustration and longing bubbling over, and the dream fell to pieces.

***

Loki was sitting cross legged on the floor of Hulk's room. The beast was still sleeping gently and one glance to the windows confirmed it was still deep night. There was no sound at all, the rest of the tower safely shut out by Loki's enchantments and a clone occupying his quarters as insurance. Grandmaster slept, likely deeply, but the condition of his slumber didn't bear contemplation.

It was still night. That was all that mattered. There was time to try again. 

Why couldn't he hear Banner? At least, the substance of the dream and his ability to interact with the doctor had improved over his previous attempt.

He sighed a deep breath. He was a god, yes, but even gods grew weary. He had to keep plodding forward and not let this chance slip through his fingers. Loki closed his eyes and the energy again sluiced out of his body with purpose and into the Hulk's slumbering frame, cracking open the landscape of his dreams.

***

The sweltering forest grew thickly around him. Branches and vines seemed to come to life as he waded through the dense undergrowth. Each plant seemed to snake around his limbs, to try and mindfully pull him from his goal. To keep him for their own. The air was thick with humidity and Loki was stripped bare to the waist, his tattoos on display. His tunic was wrapped around his speckled hair like a turban to keep it off his sweating neck.

There was a cry in the middle distance. Assuming distance could be gauged in any scale other than the few feet of reality that surrounded him before the forest closed back into an impenetrable screen of foliage.

The cry came again, more urgent. 

Once more: "Help!" It was distinctive now and Loki pressed forward through the dense jungle, following the voice.

The trees parted at last and Loki nearly fell over in his haste to stop. There was a small quagmire that broke the undergrowth and a body in the middle of it. Bruce.

The doctor's eyes were wild and his hair was matted to his forehead from sweat. His lower body was firmly embedded in the mud. Only his arms and shoulders were free from the sucking doom.

"Bruce!" Loki cast his hand out, carefully grabbing a nearby tree limb to prevent him from being dragged under as well. The scientist gripped his hand like a life line, holding on with white knuckles to his only form of salvation.

"I'll get you out of there," Loki commanded, voice steady despite the desperate situation. He pulled on the mortal's hand but it would not budge. The mud only continued the awful inevitable drag downwards to certain death.

"Help me, oh god, _please!_ " Bruce was fully panicking now. "I've got to get back to my wife, my children!" Through his exertions, Loki frowned. Wife? Children? Was this Bruce, or some other persona? Was there more than just Hulk and Banner within the mortal's mind?

"Bruce. You're Bruce, right?" he implored.   
"Yes, yes I'm Doctor Banner! Do you know me?! Do you know my wife?!" He was hyperventilating and Loki strained to keep his hand on the scientist's while gripping the tree. The muscles in his forearms and back bulged with exertion, sweat from effort and humidity dripping down his frame. The mud was now covering the mortal's shoulders, and he struggled to keep both of his hands above the morass.

"Yes, I know you. Of course I do!" Loki's fingers were slipping. "Do you know me?" Bruce met his question with a short, bitter laugh.  
"I hardly think it matters right now, but no! Oh _god_ , I'm going to die!" The mud was inching its way up his straining neck and Loki finally lost his grip on Bruce, their fingertips now only brushing but providing no anchor at all. Loki had to get out further, perhaps crawl on his bare torso to reach him. But would get he sucked in, too? Fie! He had to try! This _was a dream_ , after all.

It felt so real, though. The instinct for self-survival gave him pause until he saw the wet slick bog reach up to fleck Bruce's quivering lips. 

Loki slid onto his stomach without pause and crept out onto the surface of the bog.

"Please, please, _please_ -" Bruce's cries were a litany of sobbing and begging now.  
"I'm Loki, Bruce. _Loki_. You know me! All we've been through!" The doctor's glasses were askew, tilted on his face by his struggle. Every feature radiated abject fear.  
"Loki, whoever you are: just _fucking_ save me, please!" He was able to reach his shaking hand now, sticking out from the mire. The doctor's grip was iron, but Loki had no way to anchor himself. And there was no time for talking anymore. Bruce's mouth filled with water and mud. Then it slowly covered his nose, his eyes wide and terrified. Loki hauled upwards on his trembling hand with all the strength he could possibly muster. But it wasn't enough.

"I'm sorry. _By Bor_ , Bruce, I'm sorry. _I will_ get you out of here." His words were soothing now, the willingness to fight had fled from Loki's body. There was no point, the dream would continue on as it willed to its awful, inevitable conclusion. But Bruce was still trembling, struggling against the inexorable pull downwards. His beautiful wide eyes: under the mud now. His head, now covered. Loki brought Bruce's quivering hand to his lips and kissed it. "I will save you," he murmured solemnly. " _I promise_."

Bruce's grip went slack but Loki refused to let go, even as the nightmare shattered around him.

***

Blackness still painted the night sky. Loki shook the disturbing dream from his shoulders and forced a deep, calming breath. 

Bruce was still alive. They were still alone in the Hulk's quarters in the tower. Perhaps psychically, the scientist was being pulled under by the green beast's dominating persona, but he wasn't gone. Not. Yet.

Loki could do this. Each effort was getting better, by measures. He was getting closer.  
By Idunn, he'd finally spoken to him, and Bruce had spoken back. It was cloaked in raw terror, and the doctor didn't remember him, but... it was progress nonetheless. The quagmire was just a metaphor, not a death sentence. He would be more successful next time.

With an eye on the still-dark horizon, Loki channeled his energy and slipped past Hulk's dreaming mind once more.

***

A small fire crackled before him, creating a orange cataract in the blackness of night. He was sitting on the ground, on a rough fabric, and there was someone sitting next to him.

Bruce.

"Thank Ymir," he sighed, relishing the spot of warmth that drifted into his body where their arms touched. "Bruce..." he started softly, uncertain of himself.

"Yeah?" There was no mud choking his gorgeous mouth now, no wild fear in his eyes. Just an easy smile that made strange things clench tightly in Loki's chest. Oh, if only this wasn't a dream.  
"Where are we?" He regretted the question as soon as it left his lips.  
"That's silly," Bruce scoffed and chuckled. "You know exactly where we are. We hiked all day to get here." His eyes drifted upwards behind his glasses, gazing at the stars that speckled the heavens above. "We are on Earth, in the northwest hemisphere, in the great state of Vermont, and _that_ is M31. Most people think it's a star, but it's actually a whole galaxy." 

Loki ignored the skies and instead drowned himself on the vision in front of him. Watching Bruce watch the stars above, his head craned back without a care. Watching the mechanisms of science light up the doctor's brain. Watching his eyes fill with wonder. Watching him swallow along the length of his gorgeously exposed neck. Dream or no, it was a damn wonderful sight to behold.

"What's that one?" he murmured absently, not taking his eyes off Bruce.  
"That bright yellowish one? That's Dubhe. It's actually a giant that's fallen off the main sequence. And just massive enough that it will probably nova at the end of its life." He paused, thoughtful. "Humans have been watching that star since we thought to look up at the night sky."  
"Fascinating." It really wasn't. But it was music to hear Bruce's voice in normal unaffected cadence again. Now, for the first time since the Norns appeared that fateful day in Loki's mountainous hermitage. How novel: to hear him speak in a tones not inflected with fear or rage. 

"What about that one?" Loki murmured, studying the features of Bruce's face only.  
"You should know that one. That's Capella." The scientist continued his description of the fiery balls of gas above their heads while Loki simply sat and breathed easily. He let the tension flow out of his shoulders in a great sigh. It was if he'd been so long underwater, he'd simply forgotten he was holding his breath.

"...And that one?"  
"This isn't like you," Bruce responded, finally pulling his face downwards to regard Loki by the fire. "You know all these better than I do." The trickster couldn't help but chuckle under his breath.  
"That's true. I've been to many of them," he finally looked up, regarding the stars as old friends. "On that one", he pointed one finger, "there are towering creatures that make your elephants look like cattle."  
"Ha. _Ha_. Okay," Bruce responded, nonplussed. "Sure, and there's another where hamburgers eat people and people walk on their hands."  
"You think I jest?" Loki was a pale shade of offended. The doctor had never expressed doubt at his declarations before, at least not to his face.  
"No, not at _all_ ," Bruce smiled sardonically. "And alien abductions happen and bigfoot exists too." Behind his glasses, the doctor rolled his chocolate brown eyes.

"I'm _from_ another realm, you know this." The sorcerer was adamant now. He shouldn't have gotten angry at Bruce in a dream, but his disbelief was surprisingly irritating. Loki's acerbic tone gave Banner pause, and he stared at him as if he'd grown two heads. "What?"  
"I-I can't..." Bruce closed his eyes and shook his head as if to clear it. "I can't place you. Which is ridiculous. But... what is your name?"

Oh, no.

"Loki. You _know_ me." He sat up straight, eyes boring into Bruce's to find purchase. "I'm _Loki_. King of Asgard. Rightful Ruler of Jotunheim. Silvertongue. God of Lies. Trickster Incarnate. Et cetera, et cetera." He grasped Bruce's shoulder firmly with one hand, but not hard enough to cause pain. He wasn't after pain. Not yet. "Tell me you know me." It was a plea, not a command.  
"I-" Bruce faltered for words. A great sadness crept into his face. "I should, but... there's nothing there."  
" _No_." It was a command now. A proclamation of defiance. Loki pulled the strands of his magic around him and forced himself physically out. He wouldn't stay here any longer. The dream shattered like pane of glass. He spooled back into his own body, still seated on the floor of Hulk's room.

No.

He seethed. That wasn't possible. He wouldn't regard it as truth. Bruce _knew_ him. Bor, he was the only one who _did know him!_ If Bruce didn't, then... then...

_No._ The alternative didn't bare contemplation. 

The horizon was beginning to lighten, but the Hulk's gargantuan snores still echoed off the walls. There was still time. He had to try again. He swallowed his fear and frustration and pulled at the magic woven through his skin, sizzling in his blood, and pushed through the curtain of dreams once more.

****


	15. Chapter 15

He was standing in a room. Artificial lights blinking on and off erratically. The pungent smell of charred flesh filled his nose and Loki spun around.

The children's classroom. The aftermath.

Bruce was on the floor, holding his head in his hands and screaming himself hoarse between gasping breaths. In front of him, a small blackened body. Bobby.

 _Why_ would he dream of this? But the answer was apparent even before the question was fully formed in Loki's mind. This was the point of no return. It was the knowledge the Norns had cruelly shoved down to the doctor's throat. That which they'd forced Loki to relate. The revelation that the dead child was not merely Banner's student. It had pushed Bruce into the deep end. His pervasive and unrelenting grief had made Hulk suffocate and stomp him down in their shared mind.

"Bruce," he started gently, approaching the wailing man huddled on the floor. Loki stretched out one pale hand but held back when he saw a green tinge permeate the doctor's skin, veins bulging in his neck. He was about to transform. Historically, not a great time for Loki to be in his proximity, dream or no.  
He took a step back and tried another tactic instead.

"Bruce, it's _not_ your fault. You can't control everything. You can't be in control all the time. You'd warned him, you'd taught _all of them_ well. You couldn't have stopped this."  
"No?!" he turned on Loki, rage and pain written across his contorting face and in his deepening voice. "He was my son!! I should've taken better care of him. Been better for him. I'm a _monster!_ " He sobbed, bitter and broken, less than half-human now. "Just like _my_ father!"

"That is wholly untrue, and you know it." Loki's voice was firm now, brooking no argument. He took a chance and placed one hand lightly on Bruce's shaking shoulder. No adverse reaction. That was promising. "We are not destined to become our fathers. Look at us both! We may repeat some of their mistakes, but we are _learning_ not to." He crouched so he was at eye level with Bruce. "Look at me." He caught his gaze for a moment before the doctor glanced away to rebury his head in his hands. "You are _not_ Brian Banner. You never will be. You did not do this on purpose. You are _not_ a monster."

"Then why did this happen?" Bruce's voice had contorted until it was as thin as a crystal flute, ready to shatter on an unforgiving stone floor.  
"No reason. There's no purpose to it, no curse, no reckoning. _It was an accident._ " Loki took a deep breath, took a chance, and pulled Bruce into his arms. "They are _all_ someone's son. Someone's daughter. It just happened to be yours." Bruce curled into his embrace, thoroughly broken, sobs quietly rippling through his body.   
"It's not fair," he sobbed. Loki combed his fingers through dark curls. Oh, he'd missed those dark curls. He wouldn't chastise himself if his buried fingers itched to pull lightly at the silken locks and his mind conjured dark, forbidden images. Not now, certainly. Oh, but soon. And for real, he hoped.   
"It's never fair," Loki whispered instead. "But I am here for you, for what it's worth."

Bruce's gasps and choked breaths gradually turned to silent shaking. And the shaking finally stilled until the energy and tension had bled from the mortal's body. He simply slumped into Loki's embrace, head tucked under a pale chin.

"It's not fair. I could've... I..." But there was nothing more either of them could say. So the dark god simply held him through the silent weeping that followed.

Gradually, the features of the burned-out room faded around them into a uniform white expanse. It was the blank void between dreams, between consciousness where they had started yesterday. Features then re-formed from nothing until the two men were sitting, Bruce still curled in Loki's arms, at the pond where they'd shared that one fateful stolen afternoon. The memory was grey and foggy around the edges, but it was intact.

Bruce shook his head lightly, as if waking from a dream, and looked up into Loki's face. His mouth began to form a word, then stopped, then tried again, his eyes filling with confusion.

"Yes?" the demi-god prompted gently. Bruce's eyes were blank and void. Loki swallowed around a ball of terror lodged in his throat: afraid for all the worlds that Bruce still had no place for him in his memory. Perhaps Hulk had wiped Loki's persona out of his consciousness when he'd stuffed Bruce into a putrid crate to rot in the caverns of his own mind. 

The doctor struggled for a moment more, before an idea narrowed his eyes.  
"Loki?"  
"Oh, thank Ymir, _yes_ ," Loki breathed in exultation before sweeping his hands from Bruce's shoulders to his face and strangling him with a furious kiss. He pushed him back onto the dry grass and the doctor braced himself with both arms, struggling to breathe properly. At last, the demi-god relented. "That's the sole word I've been _craving_ to hear from your lips. Yes, Bruce. It's me." Then he tempered his joy. "What do you remember?"

"I..." he frowned, drawing memories out like slow taffy. "I remember meeting you in Wards Park... And getting beaten up in an alley... And lying to Tony about you. And..." a shy smirk formed on his face at the creeping pace of a winter sunrise. "I remember _this_ pond. Well: I remember it _pretty_ well." 

Sweet Idunn, he had missed the mischievous grin that pulled at Bruce's lips now. It ached in Loki's chest to think just moments ago, all this had been beyond the realm of possibility. Just a day ago, miserable with the idea he'd never be able to find Bruce again at all.

"Do you, now?" Loki teased, smile sharp, and suddenly his toes were growing numb. Not from desire or excitement he noted, but simply numb. Then his legs, arms. And then the pond was fading from sight. And Bruce too, his limbs evaporating into the ether. The dream was being forcefully shredded around him. Loki was being pulled back to reality. Without any choice.

He opened his eyes to Hulk howling at him from mere feet away, the roar deafening as angry spittle flew through the air. The beast had woken, and he was severely displeased. Faster than Loki could blink, the green blur closed the distance that separated them and flattened Loki against the wall, one monstrous hand bracing his weight on the metal, the other crushing against the sorcerer's chest and throat. Loki could feel the metal bend behind him, force denting the wall without mercy.

"Loki spy on Hulk! Hulk not happy!" The demi-god wheezed with the effort to move his rib cage, to force words up his windpipe and out of his mouth.  
"Not spying, _observing_. Trying... to..." he ran out of air and in response Hulk arched his palm by millimeters, giving him a sliver of space to inhale again. "To- to learn more about you. You're a _fascinating_ creature, you kno-" The hand crushed down again, stopping his words.  
"Liar! Loki NOT try learn Hulk. Try put Hulk back in cage. Let Banner loose! HULK NOT BE PUT IN CAGE!"

"No, no, no-" It was a struggle to breathe again, so Loki conjured a clone to stand beside them and talk sense to Hulk given his current inability.  
" _Not_ a cage. Never a cage. You're a dragon. A _wondrous_ great green dragon." The clone's words were quick and svelte. Hulk looked between Loki and his double, bewildered for a second, until he shook his own head violently to clear it. He focused on addressing the illusion while pressing down on the real Loki's lungs. The metal bowed further under his spine. 

"Dragons do not belong in _cages_. That's what Fury tried to do, remember?" He got a snort of agreement for that and a little pressure removed from his burning chest. "I would never deign to put you in a cage like that. But I _do_ aim to get Banner back." Loki was able to take one great gulp of breath before Hulk bore down on him again, displeased with his words. The clone chuckled slyly. "You are two minds, but you share a body. Why should one mind dominate the other? Bruce and Hulk: equal partners. Equal and fair and _free_." The clone scoffed derisively at the tableau in front of it, Hulk crushing the life out of his host. " _Why_ has it taken the two of you so long to figure that out?" Oh, he was improvising now, but doing an impressive job on the basis of the confusion washing across Hulk's face. "The dragon and the doctor." Loki's clone balanced imaginary figures on his upturned hands. "You are _both_ valued. You both have roles to play. But alas, each despises the other and tries to keep his dominance of your waking soul as long as possible." Loki was on a roll. "Be honest. That's not a _winning_ game, is it?" he spat. "All three of us know that." 

The Hulk finally relented the crushing pressure on the sorcerer's chest and the demi-god dropped a few short inches to rest his feet on the floor. The clone evaporated and Loki spoke with his own breath, rasping.

"There's a... way you can... can both win," he stuttered, coughing. "It doesn't have to be one against the other."  
"No," Hulk shook his head sadly. "Banner get control? Banner not let Hulk out again." He was still angry, but at least the creature could be reasoned with.  
"Banner can't fight the battles you do. _Banner_ can't get me off of this planet. Only Hulk can." Monstrous green eyes narrowed at that.  
"Leave planet? Hulk NOT leave. No deal, puny god." He stalked away. Loki shifted his feet quickly, following, trying to reason with an unreasonable being.

"You _enjoy_ it here?"  
"Hulk at home here. Everyone love Hulk. No one angry when Hulk smash. They say: 'Hulk smash more'! Hulk not leave." Well, that made sense, certainly.  
"What if... I could show you another place, a realm where no one will be perturbed when you 'smash'? One where your might and strength are celebrated, too. But a place where you can come and go at will, and not be subjected to the fighting ring where you are little more than Grandmaster's chained puppet?" Hulk snorted at that, nonplussed. "I mean it. I am a liar, yes. But I don't lie about this." No, Loki couldn't lie now. He had too much to lose. On both sides. "I'm talking about Asgard. My home. All they do in Asgard is fight and quarrel," he scoffed derisively. "You'd love it, I have no doubts."

Hulk pondered for a minute, genuinely pondered, but his emerald eyes narrowed again and he turned back to Loki with a frown that meant the negotiation was over.  
"Hulk not leave here."

"Leave? Where are you going, big boy?" A feminine voice broke the tense air, and Loki spun to see the bounty hunter that had graced Hulk's apartments earlier. How had she snuck up on him? The question would have to wait.

Her kind eyes turned to Loki and her face morphed into a grimace.   
"And _who_ are you?" Her whole demeanor stiffened, the easy curve of her back becoming ramrod straight. Her shoulders set, feet spaced apart. Yes, certainly ex-military. But not front line infantry. Conceivably an honor guard or elite squadron. Perhaps even an espionage or cavalry division... Loki couldn't help but wonder.

"Angry Girl! Hulk not leave. Puny god talks but Hulk not listen." She threw the big green monster a genuine smile which was instantly returned.  
"Good to hear. You're Sakaar's champion! We'd be lost without you." She turned back to Loki, serious as a heart attack. " _Got that?_ "  
"Crystal clear, my dear," he forced a tight smile. "No, we weren't discussing leaving Sakaar. That's impossible after all. I simply wanted to show Hulk the city." He saw an opening and went with it. "He's always confined to this tower or to the amphitheater. Is Hulk a prisoner?" 

She saw Loki's verbal trap for what it was, but couldn't find another way out.  
"Hulk's not a prisoner!" She addressed both men simultaneously. "He's Grandmaster's _champion_ and his favorite guest." She smiled at Hulk again, reassuring.  
"Well, in that case, all three of us can go explore the city, yes? That's all I wanted." Loki's voice was smooth as silk, but her smile contorted regardless. Hulk was quick to interject.  
"Liar. Puny god always lie." In spite of Hulk's rebuff, damage had been done, and an idea injected into his green brain. He turned to the bounty hunter. "Hulk _want_ to see city. No fun staying in tower all day."  
"That's true," she conceded, and then did a mental backflip that Loki should have seen coming, but could do nothing to prevent. "Should we explore tomorrow? I've got some time then."

"Hulk like that. Explore city tomorrow. Loki not come. Angry Girl fight with Hulk today?" The sorcerer was fast enough to catch the stunned surprise that blossomed on her face at the mention of his name. Loki: a shadow of recognition. Interesting. Did she know of him? That could be dangerous. He didn't know her at all.  
"Yeah, let's spar today. I've got the floor all set up. Should we go?" She was all smiles again, but as the two of them turned to leave, Loki interjected.  
"Where are you sparring today? And sorry," he shook his head apologetically, "what was your name?"  
"Scrapper 142. And none of your business," she plastered a fake smile on her face before turning to lead a happy Hulk out of the room and away from Loki.

****


	16. Chapter 16

  
Loki spent the rest of the day in his chambers, away from the streets, away from people, restoring his spent energies and musing on all that had passed.

He mentally located the Hulk easily enough through their shared connection and sent a clone, invisible, to watch the unknown bounty hunter and his green dragon spar. The woman was impressive: trained well in hand-to-hand combat, and not afraid to take a punch. Even when it was coming from Hulk.

Hulk, on the other hand, was truly limiting himself, slowing his motions, quelling his furor. It was more a choreography than a fight. 

No wonder he didn't want to leave Sakaar. Hulk could be himself here. Nothing was fragile or breakable. He was encouraged to let his destructive tendencies run wild. And Sakaar was where his 'Angry Girl' was. She was important to Hulk, but who was she? This bounty hunter who somehow knew of Loki. A dangerous combination, and Loki was flying blind.

The sorcerer retrieved his clone and closed his eyes, stretching out on the bed. Loki let the fatigue flow from his core through his extremities and out into the ether. Between last night's work, and the bruises Hulk had gifted him this morning, and Grandmaster's licentious predation, the demi-god was mentally wrung out. How was he going to get out of this? No, it wouldn't do to dwell on impossibilities. Instead, Loki let the joy of finding Bruce, _alive_ , if not corporeal, fill his veins starting with his fingers and toes.

Oh, the Norns had been wrong, so _very_ wrong. They proclaimed he'd never see the doctor again, never look upon him or touch him or speak to him or drag his long fingers through his hair. The Norns' words were immutable, uncompromising. They were stone truth. 

The three sisters were beings older than the age of the universe. Ones who had watched its violent birth, who saw all that was, and who could foretell and force-feed the future. Gods, in absolutely every molecule. So how was Loki able to defy them now? Would there be some consequence for his actions? For trampling across their verdict? Bruce was banished, and perhaps Loki now, too?

Or perhaps those tales of their omnipotence were just mist and fog, rooted in nothing.

It didn't matter for now. For now, he was here and Bruce was alive. Now he only had to convince Hulk to either travel to Asgard or relent his manifest control to Bruce. Neither of which seemed like a straightforward pursuit. Hulk was terrified of losing control and being bottled down forever. Loki honestly couldn't blame the green beast. Had he been in Bruce's position, he would likely do the same. Or rather had done the same. His own blue beast was crushed and drowned deep inside.

As for leaving Sakaar and going to Asgard? He could really use Hulk on his side if he had to face Hela. But the green skinned war machine was enamored with this rough planet and its occupants. And one in particular. Was it a camaraderie, or a fond affection, or something more that the beast directed at the bounty hunter? It didn't matter, really. Loki's success clearly depended on Scrapper 142 agreeing with his designs.

Oh _Idunn_ , it was all wholly _impossible_ , wasn't it? He crushed the heels of his hands against his shut eyes and groaned. 

****


	17. Chapter 17

  
Loki woke with a start. He'd just lain down to brood and think, and now several hours had passed in the blink of an eye. It had been a dreamless sleep. The sky outside his expansive windows was colored with the pinks and yellows of dimming day. 

What was next? He felt aimless, drifting. Stuck between impossible tasks. Trying to speed time to an opportunity to get Hulk alone. To reason with an unreasonable beast. To stop Hela. To get Bruce back, whole. To find a way off Sakaar.

There were so many goals to manage. But why was he looking for a physical exit sign? Maybe he'd been thinking about this wrong, all along. Grandmaster ruled here, a man of mystery and certainly magic. Could he find a pathway, like the ones that connected the Nine Realms? There were back doors on Asgard he'd discovered in his youth. Ones that ran to Midgard, Svartalfheim, Vanaheim. Maybe he could find the same here in this exotic land. He had no hope they would connect to familiar lands, but maybe it could be his start on a long pathway home.

Where to begin? Loki opened a pocket door in his chambers and stepped through to the dusty streets of the city. Perhaps it was time to make amends. He needed an ally. Even one would suffice.

***

She glanced up once from her labors, hunched over some grease-laden engine component.  
"Good afternoon," he greeted evenly, with full expectations of wrath and retribution. Instead, there was silence as she continued to work. "You look well. I'm glad." She continued to ignore him. "It's not just the skies that are forbidden," he tempted. "It's the desert, too." Samara finally glanced up at him, flat eyes morphing into angry coals.

"And why should I care? _Actually_ , why should I believe that? It's all lies coming from you, isn't it?" She turned back to her work and Loki stifled a grimace.   
"Usually, yes." He kept his tone flippant. "I _am_ the god of lies and mischief. It's by definition what I do."  
"You'll have to do better than that." He sighed. He knew what she wanted. What they all wanted, eventually. At least here it would cost him little in the way of his pride.

"I'm _sorry_. I got carried away and I burned your trust and got both of us nearly killed. Or at least, nearly maimed." She looked up again, her eyes still full of fury, but slightly diminished. "Know this: an apology doesn't come from me often, but I'm aware owe it to you. Truce?" He stuck out his right hand in a gesture he'd seen on Midgard. Uncertain if it translated.

"Apologies are just words," she bit out, ignoring his extended palm. "They carry no weight and cost nothing. Give me something I can _use_ , or borrow, or trade, or sell. Until then, get out of my shadow and my sight." Practical to a fault. But he understood that. And he could reciprocate.

Loki wound a small thread of magic from his fingers. He allowed it to be visible, glowing faintly golden, letting it dance across the filthy manifold she was laboring over. Samara startled, backing up from her workstation. Her eyes were wide. She hadn't been aware of his sorcery at all until now. The wrench fell from her limp hand, forgotten as she focused on watching him. His magic danced across greasy and rusted metal, making it clean and uncorroded. Bent flanges were smoothed and straightened. Dents evened out. In a matter of seconds, Samara had a nearly new intake turbine shining in front of her.

"Witch," she whispered. But it was uttered in awe as much as fear.  
"Apt. I've been called worse," he leered, grinning. Her eyes sharpened on him now, losing the glaze that had covered them moments before.  
" _That's_ how you cleaned my latrine so quickly, isn't it? And the mess hall. Did you muck up my recursion-thrusters with your tricks?!" she accused. Loki threw up his hands in mock-surrender, laughing.  
"I swear not. The mechanic may have been _persuaded_ to fix them correctly, but I didn't touch them myself." The sharp smile was still glowing on his face, undimmed.   
"What do you want?" she spit at him, skeptical. Skeptical was good, progress.  
"A favor for a favor. I'll lend a hand wherever needed on your vessel if you'll take me up into the great blue yonder." Samara bit back a laugh.  
"Give you a lift in my craft again? And get myself _killed?_ You're far stupider than you look. Or else you think I'm stupid."

Loki ran his fingers through his silvering hair and smiled slyly, cocking his chin to one side in the manner he knew had a high probability of him getting his way.  
"I'm not a fool. No, far from it. I understand now what constrains people from leaving this place. It's not the air. It's not the 'star'. It's not the desert. It's _magic_." He let his words sink in before continuing. "There is a great sorcerer who keeps his fingers wrapped around the throat of every inhabitant here. I aim to find a way around it. A keyhole. A passageway." She scoffed at him, but remained silent, listening. He knew he had her now. Almost. "I've located them before in other realms. And I know I can find them again. But I don't have the leisure to scour every inch of this wasteland on foot. I need elevation. Are you in?"

Samara shook her head.   
"The ravings of a crazy man. Too much drink and too much sun. Desperate for a way out. Desperate for his own _self-importance_." Loki didn't think she was talking solely about him anymore. He threw a bubble of silence around them, cutting off the outside world. It was as much to give them privacy as it was to impress upon her the legitimacy of his endeavor.   
"First you call me fool, now crazy. Do I _look_ crazy to you?" he tried, somber.  
"Yes!" she cried, but it ended in a laugh. She noticed the silence that had descended around them, cutting them off from the other bounty hunters that milled between the landed craft around them. Her voice rapidly sobered. "Oh my god, you're _insane_. You expect me to take you up and then... what?"  
"Then I'll cast my consciousness over the landscape and sift through the fabric of this realm at a more rapid pace than I could accomplish on my own. And we _both_ find a way off of Sakaar."

***

It spoke to her instinctive desire for new horizons that she didn't require Loki to hold up his end of the bargain first. She hadn't even named a favor in return. Rather, they were both up in the air in short order and the demi-god had seated himself on the floor of the fuselage, eyes closed, casting about with the magic that was tattooed into his skin, woven through his bones, suffused through his DNA. He let his questing take a more passive stance than he would normally, still rightly worried that an active approach would be detected, isolated, and stomped out by the dictator of this realm. Grandmaster was still an unknown quantity. Loki didn't desire to test him in the least or bring any attention to their joint exploration.

The light in the atmosphere that heralded day slowly faded from sight and Samara flew them in scanning patterns in the dark sky. They had plenty of fuel. Enough to last all night. 

Perhaps his fate was starting to improve.

****


	18. Chapter 18

  
Loki crept through the pocket portal to his chambers in Grandmaster's tower. The search he and Samara had undertaken had not been fruitless, but it would take at least another day, two at the utmost, to be certain there was a pathway that led off Sakaar. The promising site they'd found could lead to a thousand other places: crushed under a monolith of stone, burned in the center of a star, untethered in the cruel vacuum of the void.

He was recharged by some measure despite their undertaking. He and Samara had reconciled, and the fragile companionship that he'd cavalierly destroyed was beginning to re-form. It was still dark outside. Daylight was at least another hour away. No time to waste. He deposited a sleeping clone on his bed and stepped through another crafted doorway to floor 303.

The Hulk was dead asleep. Thank Ymir. He sat down in the shadow of a pillar, cautious to keep himself out of Hulk's immediate line of sight. It was a lesson learned well from last time. Magic glowed around Loki's arms and streamed down his scalp, feeding into his ears, behind his eyes. He poured the power into Hulk's mind and dropped again into his dreams.

***

Loki was floating outside himself. Stars cascaded around his form. Bruce was there, too. Loki was watching himself and Bruce floating in the void from a third perspective. The doctor was clearly dreaming about the past: the convergence point between Midgard and its moon where Loki had pulled the Hulk out of his rampage. How had he managed it then? Loki couldn't remember clearly. But the gory details were provided by Bruce's memories now. He saw his past self floating in the ether, cut to ribbons. His ear sliced away, his arms and legs chewed and burnt and bleeding copiously into the bubble of air that erupted artificially in the vacuum.

By Bor, had he done _all_ that to himself? The figure was a bloody mess, mutilated and ragged, only adrenaline keeping him balanced on the edge of consciousness. He watched as his past self pulled Bruce towards his broken body with a tether of magic and then begged the scientist to strike him violently until assistance arrived.

It was a strange thing to watch from outside one's self. Loki couldn't even think to engage the two floating in front of him, either to talk to Bruce or to guide the tableau of his dream. 

A looming presence appeared suddenly at his side. Loki turned his head to see the Hulk, floating placidly in space next to him.

"What this?" the green dragon grunted, nodding at the two figures who clung desperately to each other, holding onto a sliver of awareness through begrudging violence.  
"...What?" Loki took a moment to catch up. The Hulk, an actor in Bruce's dream? But then... Was dreaming Bruce the one before him, beating his past self senseless? And Hulk was? Just Hulk? Had Loki stolen into Bruce's dream or Hulk's dream?

"Why Banner beat Puny God?"  
"You don't remember, do you?" Loki decided to at least play along with his own insane theory until it was proven false. Or until he had a better one.  
"Banner defeat Puny God?" He laughed, a deep rumble. "Loki much weaker than Hulk guess."  
"He didn't _defeat_ me," the trickster spat, irritated at Hulk's impudence. "I was _saving_ him. From _you_." Hulk smacked his lips together derisively.

"Liar. Banner not need saving. Hulk never hurt Banner. Not possible."  
"Yes, _it is_ so possible," he pivoted in the frictionless environs of the void towards the green incubus. "This is an old story, but I'll tell it _again_ for your benefit, you dull creature. Bruce killed his son. Your son, too, now that I think about it. He couldn't bear the grief." Loki's voice grew louder, tinged with indignation, even as he was unaware of it. "He, or rather you, _rampaged_ across Midgard. I curtailed your path of destruction, brought you back to yourself before Fury and the other Kings of Midgard could _ransack your planet_ trying to bring you to heel." Hulk snorted, clearly not believing Loki's tale. "It doesn't matter if you remember it, or even if you agree with me." His voice was a sharpened dagger now. "It _happened_. I saved you and Bruce both, and then Bruce saved _me_." His own words slapped him in the face as soon as they'd left his lips. Any further words were lodged in his throat, choking him. His face grew slack, stunned.

"He saved me." Loki closed his eyes and let the cold desperate desolation wash through his core. He tried to quell it, bury it down, but the truth had been spoken. Bruce had saved him. In a multitude of ways. Fluid gathered behind his closed lids, but he wouldn't let it out. He couldn't. Loki was hot and cold at the same time and goosepimples ran over his pale skin, overcome by a realization he wasn't expecting. His voice was only a whisper. "I didn't know I... needed to be saved... until he did." Words were hard now, strangling him and stopping his breath. But Hulk had grown silent beside him. 

Was this progress? Then perhaps this encounter wasn't a _complete_ embarrassment of a disaster.

"Loki not make sense." Hulk was quieter now, too.  
"I'm aware of that," Loki scoffed, anger directed at himself. Was there anything left to lose? Should he play all his cards? "He... Bruce makes me a better person. Really, I'm quite an awful bastard. You're aware. But Bruce, he..." Loki stopped to inhale through his nose, his eyes still shut closed to the awful truth he was baring. It felt like Hulk was splitting his ribcage open, inspecting the organs inside, and finding him desperately wanting.

"He and I are a disaster pair. Cursed. But he keeps me sane. And I think I do likewise for him. We're... a pair of monsters, together." Hulk was silent for a bit, thinking over Loki's words.  
"No. Banner not monster. Hulk monster." Loki opened his eyes, fixing Hulk with a glare of disbelief.  
"We are _all_ monsters." How true that was. "Some of us keep it buried and some of us have to show our scars to the world." Hulk huffed and crossed his arms, but he seemed to agree with Loki.

"Let Bruce come back. Please," he tried again. "I meant what I said before. You can share a body. A life. I won't allow Bruce to entomb you like he did before. Like how you're smothering him now."  
"Share? Never share," Hulk growled. "Banner try make Hulk go away. Try kill Hulk."  
"How _ever_ could he do that?" It was Loki's turn to growl. "You're each a part of the other. Why is it _neither_ of you can see that?!" 

But anger only beget anger and Hulk become visibly addled. Loki closed his eyes momentarily and took a deep breath. When he opened them, he added, "The way it could work, the way it _will work_ , is very simple. Hulk gets the day. The sunshine, the fights, the camaraderie, the battles. Every day. It's all yours." It made sense. It was the only option. "At night? Banner gets the nights."  
"And Loki gets Banner."  
" _Exactly_ ," he rasped, feeling the heat flow through his body and pool inconveniently in his groin. Idunn, it was true. He missed Bruce in more ways than one. And Hulk knew it now, too.

"Loki say pretty words, but Hulk know Loki lie. And Hulk not leave Angry Girl." He crossed his massive arms over one another. "No deal." Loki could feel the dream begin to shred around him with the finality of Hulk's declaration.  
" _Wait_ , Hulk - let me just-" but his words were burnt away and the memory of the void with it. The figures of their past selves and present Hulk and Loki too: all dissolving as the dream evaporated.

Loki opened his eyes to the real world. Hulk stared around the pillar at him in the dim dawn light, immovable in his conviction.

"My, my, you're a slippery one, aren't you?" They weren't alone. Grandmaster was standing right at Hulk's side. "You happen to disappear for a cycle and a half and then suddenly I find you in my champion's room after dark?" The ruler kept his tone light but his eyes narrowed dangerously. "People will _talk_ ," he clucked. Loki knew he was in a world of trouble now despite Grandmaster's effected flippancy and he felt his blood run cold. The room remained dark. As if it wasn't worth it for this self-appointed god to gift them with light.   
"Grandmaster, I-"  
"You know, it _cuts me_ to the quick when my guests reject my hospitality. And I tried ever so hard to be an accommodating host." His eyes glazed for a moment and his mask slipped. "The things we could have accomplished. The games we could have set. The _power_ I could have shown you," he mused. The moment passed, the opportunity for mercy rescinded in a flash. His mask slipped back into place. "But we can't dwell on the past, can we? Topaz," he called lightly to his side. The bulky bodyguard and a cadre of blue servants stepped out of the shadows. 

This was all an ambush. This was all planned, a play being acted out for Loki's benefit. He could see that clearly. 

"Could you please _kindly_ show our guest to more suitable quarters?"  
"I suppose this means we're not dining together tonight?" Loki tried to bluff, a sly smirk on his face.  
"Oh, no. No, no, no. Not tonight. Not _ever_ , to be factual." Grandmaster's tone grew cold as ice. "It was an interesting game you played, and I _did_ enjoy parts of it," he had the audacity to wink plastically. "But I don't appreciate being _toyed_ with."

"What game? I am only a 'trickster', not a 'grandmaster'," Loki tried to smile and bow obsequiously, but behind his back he was calmly threading a spool of magic around one finger. Just enough to open a portal back to... that tavern in the city where he'd been before. That would do nicely. A quick escape, time to reset the playing field to his favor. Time to formulate step two.

"How true that is." Grandmaster grinned at him now, an honest one that reached his eyes. It was benevolent and genuine and in that measure, purely terrifying. Loki's heart had half a second to stutter in fear before he felt the magic spool slip off his finger, pulled by force. And then he felt as though all the breath in his body had been siphoned out. All his magic forcibly liquefied, oozing outwards through his skin. His power and his options dripped without his control out of his flesh to pool on the floor. His breath glued in his throat. Without magic, he'd have to make another play. Something desperate, some gamble...

Before his fluttering thoughts could settle on any idea at all, Loki's arms were bound to his sides by a force stronger than gravity. It was an action without physicality, all magic. The move was quick and brutal and Loki could not hope to fight it. His lungs seized, pain gripping his chest. The world tipped on its axis and the floor came up to meet his face. In a few short seconds he was sprawling on the ground, nose crumpled in a bloody mess against the stone, unable to move. Unable to speak. Unable to breathe. The panic rose in his throat as pain shot through his stomach.

"You probably realized a while ago that I practice the galactic arts, too. It's a shame you didn't act sooner. This might have been entertaining rather than simply disappointing." Loki could hear Grandmaster, but could not see him from his disadvantaged perspective on the floor. He wanted to writhe, to lash out, to scream, but he was frozen in place: his muscles unable to move, his lungs unable to breathe. Footsteps approached Loki until they filled his vision. Grandmaster crouched down until both men were once again on eye level. "I watched you. That's how." He answered Loki's unspoken question. The trickster's vision was starting to redden at the edges from lack of oxygen. One more problem in his list of dozens. His lungs would not obey his fierce commands for breath.

"I _felt_ you, perhaps is a better descriptor. Who had decimated a dozen of my bounty hunters in the span of a minute? Who could be testing the limits of my atmospheric restrictions?" he pretended to muse. "Hmmm... Who could be harassing my sentinel in the desert?" The dictator's voice grew louder, finally migrating from irritation to anger. "Or masquerading at my contest of champions? Or _bewitching_ my poor vendors? _Who_ could it be that was jumping around from _floor to floor_ within MY OWN HOUSE?!" Grandmaster checked his rage with a light laugh then, shaking his head to clear it. " _Who_ would be _foolish_ enough to do so?" He chuckled again, but Loki wished he'd stop grandstanding get it over with. Whatever the deity had planned. 

Loki could plainly see now how foolhardy he'd been. He thought he'd kept a tight leash on his own magic, but Grandmaster was far keener than he'd assumed. He'd underestimated the ruler, plain and simple. Loki's brain was on fire and his awareness starting to fade from the pain and asphyxiation. 

"Funny. You're a _funny_ one, Asgard. Your confidence was your downfall. Well, I don't have to tell you. No purpose teaching a lesson to a _dead man_." A chill shot down Loki's spine despite his inability to move. "Topaz, buddy. Take him to the building where we keep the prisoners with jobs."

"The slave pens, sir?" she responded, the tinge of joy in her voice undisguised.  
"Oh, yes, if you insist on calling it that." Loki could hear Grandmaster shuffle out of the room without pause or another word to spare for Loki's pitiful state. The demi-god couldn't even fear now, he could only exist in this horrible limbo between life and death. The red that rimmed his vision had turned to black in the absence of oxygen. His optic nerves shutting down.  
"With _pleasure_ ," Topaz whispered for Loki's benefit before he fell into oblivion.

****


	19. Chapter 19

  
There was soil in his mouth and a crust of bodily fluids gluing his eyelids together. His nose was crushed, a slow aching pain. His neck was at an angle and pinched, a telltale sign that his body had been in an awkward position for a long while. Too long.

At least he was alive.

Loki tried to push himself upright before opening his eyes, but his first attempt failed, his arms weaker than anticipated. It was as if all of the strength had been drained from his body.

But maybe that was an accurate description? He reached for his magic instinctively, for the power that lay coiled like a snake in his core. But there was nothing. Only a great void. An emptiness. Like a phantom limb. He had woken up metaphorically naked, vulnerable and bared to the world. No protection, no ability to heal, no guidance, no support. It was a terrifying and disarming feeling. One he'd not felt in eons. Not since...

No. He severed that train of thought. Now was not the time to bitterly reminisce. Perhaps not ever, if he was lucky.

On the second attempt, he succeeded in pushing himself upright and used the edge of his cloak to wipe most of the dirt from his face, avoiding his delicately bleeding nose. His eyelids pulled apart stiffly as he opened them to look around. It was a prison cell, that much was plain. Captivity didn't take a diverse variety of forms across the wide universe. 

There were others in his cell. At least a dozen men and beasts in various forms. Milling about on the edges, keeping to themselves. Acquiesced to their fate long ago. Wholly uninterested in his presence. What novelty was there in a new prisoner? Their curiosity, their élan vital, had been scrubbed away by the abject hopelessness of their circumstance. Which Loki now shared.

And the smell was _horrifying_. A broken nose didn't spare him that.

Suddenly, Loki knew exactly where he was. An enormous creature made of rock looked up from the scratches he was idly drawing on the wall and caught Loki's gaze. He knew him, but the creature showed no signs of mutual recognition. Then Loki remembered fully. He had been in the guise of the dead bounty hunter when they'd first met.

The creature stood and shuffled over to Loki, still seated on the dirt floor. He extended one hand and Loki took it, grateful for any non-aggressive contact.  
"Hey there, stranger," he lilted. "The name's Korg. Welcome." Loki tried not to laugh but failed. Korg continued to be unaccountably buoyant in this desolate place. It made absolutely no sense.  
"Hello Korg, well met. I'm Loki," he smiled, wiping the film of dirt from his teeth with his tongue before continuing. "I take it this is the fighters' pen?"  
"Yep, you're a smart one. This is my buddy, Miek. Say hello to Loki," he prompted a small purplish amphibian creature. It squawked at Loki before turning away to pursue other interests.

The fallen king attempted to stretch and winced. It felt like his bones were fused together. There was a calm passivity to the creatures that occupied this cell. A reluctance to violence before it was specifically demanded of them. It was entirely different from what he expected: an in-fighting rabble desperate to sabotage their probable opponents before the next bout.

"So. When will the Grandmaster require us to fight next?" There was no point in subtlety. Korg shrugged his granite shoulders and sat back on the ground.   
"Hmm. Two, maybe three cycles? They don't give us a lot of info down here. But it should be soon. There's been a number of new recruits, yourself included. Folk'll be eager for a fight." Behind him, Miek had shrugged out of his exoskeletal blades, picked up a harmless pole, and playfully struck Korg over the shoulders.  
"Ah, you right cur!" he laughed, turning to practice with the small creature.

Loki was forgotten again and settled back against the wall to wait and plot. He'd been so close to connecting with the Hulk. Even the green dragon himself was not immune to Loki's unfettered logic and powers of persuasion. If only he'd had more time. If only he hadn't been caught out by the Grandmaster. That was really the crux of the issue. 

It was due to his own failing. He thought he'd been so careful, over-deliberate and wary, but the dictator had been following his trail every step of the way. Loki's ego and self-assurance had brought him to his knees. It was a sharp pill to swallow. He only had himself to blame. Now, without his magic, it seemed an impossible task was set before him to survive the fighting circle.

***

Loki had dozed off, propped against the wall. The trauma of Grandmaster's attack and the long sleepless nights had caught up with him at last. His heavy eyes opened to the sounds of a hundred people's feet. No, a thousand. 

No. Far more than that.

The imprisoned men and beasts were filing out of the cell in a single line, and returning to it armed and armored. He caught Korg aside, his broad shoulders now clad in thick leather pauldrons. The shielding was humorous, out of place. Like tissue paper guarding a wall of brick.

"What's going on?" he questioned uselessly. It was obvious. A cold stone sank in Loki's stomach. He'd had no time to prepare or recover. There wasn't a molecule of magic to be found anywhere in his body He felt comprehensively weak.  
"Fight tonight, Grandmaster said," Korg wasn't smiling, but he was making an attempt. His joyless smile didn't reach the edges of his mouth or his eyes. "Special exhibition. You should get ready, grab a good weapon before they're all gone," he nudged Loki forward into the line of dour warriors.

Valhalla on high... Loki was trained in battle craft and he'd been responsible for a great share of brutality when Asgard had marched to war. But that was different. The demi-god was a shadow of himself now without his powers and craft to rely on. He could only be smart and quick and lucky now. He trudged forward, scanning the rack of weapons. Calloused hands were narrowing his options by the second. An axe, no. A bow, not ideal. A hammer? A high keening laugh of bitter irony threatened to spill from his lips. There was a double ended halberd buried under several other implements and he snatched it before anyone else could. 

A few knives on lower racks were quickly strapped to his arms and legs. The crowd of warriors thinned, trickling back to the holding cage. He followed, enmeshing himself in their midst. Perhaps he wouldn't be called on to fight tonight. It was an idle fantasy he crushed down. Korg had said 'new recruits' and 'special exhibition' and Loki didn't doubt for a minute that meant him specifically. 

Grandmaster was out for vengeance. Whatever lock he kept on Loki's magic could only be temporary, held in place through his own effort. The trickster had undoubtedly disappointed and betrayed him. A potential lover, squandered. A valuable champion and propaganda tool, nearly lost. Edges frayed in the fabric of his consummate control. 

No, there was absolutely no doubt. Grandmaster was going to put Loki front and center tonight and gleefully watch him get butchered. It was an execution by his measure, plain and simple.

The unseen crowd overhead roared with excitement and the doors to the arena opened. He wasn't wrong. Guards marched in and isolated Loki with single-minded determination. There was no reason to fight or struggle. Not yet. He'd conserve his energy, survive this bout, and live to plot a way out. He strode onto the dusty field of blood, spotlights shining in his eyes, the seated crowd rising far into the sky above. It was simply disorienting from this angle. Anticipatory energy was thick in the air. On cue, the hologram of Grandmaster flickered above the bowl of the amphitheater. He seen it all before. It was all so predictable.

"Friends, brothers, great people of Sakaar!" He waited for the cheers to rise and fall. "We've got a special, and I mean _very special_ program for you tonight. Not one but _two_ challengers take the field. Oh yes," his hologram chuckled, steepling his fingers and basking in the mass adoration. "Quite a treat. The first is... a magician? A king? Or maybe just a bad storyteller. Who knows? He had some tricks up his sleeve when we caught him, but that wouldn't be playing fair now, would it? He's here for you tonight, a _one-night show_ only," he stopped to chuckle and Loki gritted his teeth. Presumptuous cretin. "All the way from Asgard..." his hologram turned to speak with someone off-camera, "...what's his name? ... I thought it _was_ Asgard?" Grandmaster shook off his light irritation. "The nameless _fraud_ of Asgard! And his opponent tonight. You know him, you love him. Who wouldn't? Kubon the Disembowler!" Loki's face turned into a frown as Grandmaster's hologram faded out. Not Hulk? He wasn't expecting that.

Hulk he could reason with. Maybe. But Kubon? Who was Ku-

Loki was knocked flat on his back and his thoughts shattered.

 _Ymir's Blood._ Pain radiated through Loki's chest and he struggled to breathe. He could hear the creature scuttling around him on the clay soil, keeping a distance, gauging his reaction. He'd been caught out. An inexcusable mistake. Loki mustered his strength and rose in one swift move, spinning to face his opponent. It was something like a beetle grown to the size of a horse, with half a dozen or more legs and beak-like protrusions all over its body. He couldn't even tell if it had a head, or a face, or one weak area at all.

But it did have razor-sharp arms, which it swung at Loki now as it charged. He ducked and twisted under one, bringing one end of the halberd up underneath a leg, taking a good chunk of flesh away and making the creature squeal. But his victory was short-lived as another limb lifted and stabbed down at him, slicing open the leg of his breeches, narrowly missing his skin. While distracted, the creature jabbed one arm at Loki and punched through the armor on his shoulders, piercing through muscle right down to bone. The crowd cheered, ravenous at the sight of blood.

Loki gritted his teeth, managed not to scream, and pulled himself up and away. He had to put distance between himself and Kubon. Its strength was clearly in close quarters combat. And while Loki didn't have his magic, he did have the length of his weapon to keep him out of reach. They circled each other, looking for an opening. Kubon pumped one of his many arms in the air, riling the crowd. The audience stomped their feet and screamed and sang and did their utmost to deafen Loki. 

He took the opportunity to aim and drive the spike towards the creature's feet. Success at last: he sliced one cleanly off. Kubon was slow to react at first, then wound its remaining feet underneath, tucking its arms into itself. At once, turning from a hexapedal creature into a rolling ball of gnawing beaks and razor death. It aimed and spun towards Loki. There were no soft spots now. It was just a mass of plates and blades and the demi-god was instantly on the defense, dodging and swerving and ducking out of the way as Kubon changed course and charged over and over.

He was working up a sweat and breathing heavily. If his strategy had been to limit his opponent's movement, its strategy was to simply wear Loki out. And it was starting to work. He jabbed with the poleaxe, but the sharp flange simply bounced off of Kubon's armored plates. He tried again, and the spike was driven deep into the ground, stuck fast. _Bor's Great Bloody Arsehole!_ This wasn't working at all in his favor. 

Kubon pivoted and charged again and Loki tried to work the halberd out of the soil. No luck. He unsheathed a dagger from his leg instead. Any move would have to be swift with such a short blade. He jabbed at the creature, slicing flesh and pulling his arm back out of reach. But at the last moment the creature twisted in a new, unnatural vector and the beaks that covered its carapace snatched away Loki's outstretched blade and chewed unmercifully at his arm. Loki screamed, dragging his forearm away and rolling out of the beast's path. Blood throbbed out of his veins and spattered on the ground. Bits of bone were exposed, tendons languid and torn. His arm was not broken, but it was a frighteningly close thing.

The crowded roared at the copious sight of blood. They were finally getting their money's worth. Loki pinned the wounded appendage to his side and forced the idea of pain to the back of his mind. It wasn't important now. He could heal later. He certainly couldn't now, anyway. No, he had to best this creature, and quickly. Or it would all be over. He felt the first real pinpricks of mortal fear on the back of his neck.

Kubon gloated over the damage it had inflicted, uncurling its feet at long last and performing a preemptive victory lap for the crowd. Loki saw his chance. In another moment, it would be gone. He grasped the halberd with his undamaged hand and hauled upwards with all his might. At last it came unstuck from the ground and he converted the terrible momentum into an arcing swing leveled straight at the creature's exposed legs. Kubon had made a strategic mistake. The blade bit down and sheered off three limbs in one motion. 

The creature screamed, a high unnatural cry like two raw neurons, flayed open, electrocuted. It pitched to one side, pushing with its undamaged legs away from Loki. A desperate bid to regroup, to return to the offensive. The trickster saw it begin to curl upon itself and he twisted his torso, bringing the flange of his weapon back up and slicing through the beast's remaining legs with surgical precision. It was done. He dropped the halberd on the ground, panting for lack of breath and the suffusive pain that began to trickle into his consciousness once more.

The crowd crowed derisively, their displeasure at Kubon's defeat plain. But Loki's heart was only joy and lightness at having overcome such a fearsome and unexpected enemy with nothing more than his wits and his muscles. It was his turn to perform the victory lap. He put one foot in front of the other, but Grandmaster's holo reappeared, floating over his head like a demonic vision.

"Oh no, no, _no_. The rules haven't changed. Defeat is not complete without a head rolling at my feet." His lips spread in a sharp grin. "Finish him off, Asgard. _If_ you're able. Or... we'll finish off _both_ of you. Right, my friends?" he appealed to the crowd who howled with bloodlust. 

This was ridiculous. Kill or be killed? What an archaic compulsion. It was convenient, yes. But more than that, it was an efficient way to ensure Loki was laid as low as possible. As vulnerable and broken as possible. A mere tool. He wasn't a champion yet. He hadn't won until the beast's throat was slit. If it even had one.

Wearily, he picked up his halberd and stalked towards the creature writhing in pain at the loss of its limbs. He had no moral qualms with killing in broad terms, but here his hand was being forced. _That_ was repellent. He had no quarrel with the Kubon, even if it had chewed away half his arm like a meat saw.

No, he was only a _puppet_ here. Being made to murder for entertainment. Against his will. By a cruel despot who couldn't be bothered to dirty his own hands.

"Nothing personal," Loki muttered to the creature, devoid of emotion. Did it even understand him? He raised the halberd, careful now not to underestimate its dexterity. Seeing no resistance, Loki proceeded to plunge the long spike into its thorax. The creature quivered violently, then stilled. A mercy killing, perhaps? At least the horrible, feeble thrashing of the defeated beast had stopped.

 _Now_ he would take his victory lap.

"Congratulations, Asgard." Grandmaster's visage appeared in the air above him again, slowly applauding a wholly unlaudable victory. "Would you like to return to your quarters now? Receive treatment for that _awful_ looking arm?" Loki didn't answer but instead inclined his head in a mock-bow and headed for the prisoners' exit. "Oh? You... thought I was _serious?_ " Grandmaster's words stopped his feet in their tracks. A angry fire built in Loki's brow as the self-declared god chuckled heartily at his expense. The offer of mercy was too good to be true after all. Not surprising, merely disappointing. The fear began to gather at the back of his neck again. He couldn't withstand another opponent now, certainly not one at Kubon's level. "Oh, my goodness, no. You're not leaving the arena _alive_. I think you misunderstood." He turned to the crowd theatrically as Loki's rage curdled in his stomach. "Who should we bring on next, friends?" He cajoled the mob, throwing his arms wide, amping up the anticipation. "Who? I know exactly who! Your beloved champion, your Hulk!!"

Loki had no time to react, the doors at the far end of the arena bursting open and Hulk rushing onto the killing floor, bedecked in plate armor. Grandmaster was no longer playing around. He simply wanted Loki dead. The Hulk wielded a great mace between his hands, each spike nearly half as long as Loki's body. _Oh, Idunn, no._

The green beast was berserk, whipped into a mindless frenzy. The hairs on the back of Loki's neck stood at attention. It was the wasteland of Negril all over again, staring down the barrel of a cannon as Hulk charged. Loki had half a second to question whether it was of his own volition or not. He began to sincerely doubt it. As Hulk rampaged closer, he could see the whites in his eyes: faded blood red. His pupils dilated, an unseeing vacancy past the fog of fury that inundated his brain. He was a weapon, no more and no less. Intent on destroying anything in his path. 

Loki's chest burned with equal parts fear and adrenaline and pity. 

There was no time to respond to or crush the emotions swirling in his blood. He simply acted, a being of instinct and well-honed reflexes. He flattened himself to the deck as Hulk swung his great weapon overhead, a terrifying whistling sound as it cut through the air. Two inches more, and it would have been Loki's head. He rolled out of the way and sprung to his feet, diving in a series of curves to propel himself out of the counter-swing and put distance between them. Hulk growled in frustration, smashing the mace into the dirt over and over and kicking up a cloud of dust. His herculean figure was partially obscured, but Loki used his keen eyesight to determine the location of the Hulk. He didn't want to injure him, but really, how badly could he? He made a calculated guess and aimed for the beast's eyes, gathering the strength in his torso to hurl the poleaxe with all his might into the cloud of dust.

Loki heard a clatter as the weapon was knocked away and then an unearthly howl. Hulk was mad. Angrier than before. Well, he had to try _something_ , didn't he? But it had backfired spectacularly. A mass of charged energy and muscles bounded out of the cloud of dust and charged at Loki. He dove out of the way, intending to spring forward and grab the halberd again, but Hulk connected. One green fist hit Loki's ankle in mid-air and spun him like a top in a totally different direction. He rolled and scrambled desperately to his feet to find himself knocked halfway across the arena again. His head was spinning, his vision blurry from the impact. Hulk snorted, apparently angry at himself for not simply knocking him unconscious.

"Hulk!" Loki managed to gasp and shout in the precious intervening moments before the beast launched himself anew. "I am not your enemy here!" His destroyed and bleeding arm was forgotten in the heat of the moment, and Loki waved both overhead as he struggled to his feet, trying in vain to emphasize his point. "I am your way _free_. I am _Bruce's_ way free. You're just a pawn here, a puppet, like all the rest-" 

He wanted to continue, but snapped his mouth shut and focused on running when Hulk decided he was tired of listening and ready to attack again. Without a decent weapon or his magic, all the sorcerer could do was run. Loki sped along the edge of the arena, betting soundly on his ability to outmaneuver the green titan. And he was right. For a time. He changed directions manically, spending precious energy to stop, pivot, and bound away again and again while Hulk dedicated his entire force into crushing the trickster into the wall. But the maddened beast crushed only stone under his bulk as he tried and failed. 

Loki took the opportunity to pitch the daggers strapped to his legs at the dragon who was now dizzy from his own impacts, regrouping. One blade bounced off his leathery skin, but the other struck home in the surprisingly soft flesh behind one monstrous ear.

Hulk's scream of retaliation was deafening. Loki began to run again, but he was quickly caught. Given a choice between his Hulk's massive fists and the sharply evil mace, Loki was hopelessly grateful it was the beast's fingers that closed around his intact arm. Needles of pain flared through his chest. Then he was flung back and forth against the ground like a rabbit. His vision turned white, then red, and finally black.

****


	20. Chapter 20

  
A roar was the first thing he was aware of. A sound like the petulant ocean voicing its displeasure against an oncoming storm. The next was the soil against his face and chest, damp and muddy and gritty. Then he became cognizant of the overwhelming pain boiling through his chest and his arms and his legs. He could hardly move, but he knew instinctively he needed to. There was a giant animal above him, sniffing his head like he was some delicious entrée.

"Hulk in pain. Why?"

Oh. It wasn't an animal seeking to devour him. It was Hulk. Loki remembered now. Every molecule in his body screamed and he had no magic or balm to turn to assuage his agony. The trickster opened his eyes, the dirt sting a faint irritation compared to the floodlights that blinded him, the discernible displeasure of the arena spectators, and his myriad other miseries. 

He was still here. In the fighting pit. He must have blacked out.

He half wished he had simply perished. But no, there were still tortures to be borne and impossible decisions to make. He was so tired. And in such excruciating pain.

Hulk wanted to talk? That sounded promising, but he wouldn't allow himself to entertain any thread of optimism yet. Or even the possibility of optimism. The sorcerer pushed himself to a sitting position by the sheer force of his core muscles and the arm that was merely shredded down to the bone. The other was a mass of agony. Perhaps it was broken. He couldn't bring himself to look.

"I'll play along... Why is Hulk in pain? Regard _my condition_ , after all..." His voice was a horse, thready thing. But the great beast responded all the same.  
"Hulk not know. Hulk _beat_ Loki, but Hulk feel pain. Why?" Oh Idunn! He suddenly _knew_ why. It had worked. The connection! It was still there!  
"That's because you're feeling _my_ pain, not your own. We are _connected_ my great green friend. You and I. And I and Bruce. And you and Bruce. The three of us are not separate. This is why-" his words were racing and he gasped for breath around what were undoubtedly broken ribs. "Why we _must work together_. I'm your ally, not your enemy."

"Finish him, my champion!" Grandmaster's leering voice boomed through the arena, bolstered by renewed cheers from the crowd. His holo projection scowled in the air over them, but Hulk paid it no mind.  
"Hulk not trust Loki. Loki always lie." He was adamant.  
"Yes, I do lie. That's my nature. But I'm not lying to _you_. I'm not lying to _Bruce_." He put all the honesty and earnestness he could muster into his eyes, his voice. His life depended on it now. "I'm on your side, which is technically _my side_ , too. You can trust my selfishness. You can trust me in this..." he struggled for the right words, "confederacy of monsters." 

Hulk's next words were bittersweet. Strategically optimum, but Loki knew it would come at a cost. Was he ready to pay it?  
"Hulk monster. Loki not monster."

The dark god took a moment to observe the blood still trickling down his mauled arm, his crushed nose, crusted with gore, the projected frowning face of a displeased Grandmaster, and the crowd that was screaming madly for his death. 

Yes, he was now ready to pay the toll. To face the consequences. There was no other way out.

"Not a monster?" _Ymir_ , he couldn't believe he was doing this. Better to proceed without thinking. Just get it over with. Leap into the void. Own up to his own spectacular failures. And Laufey's failures. Odin's failures. The miserable truth of his stolen life. He had no magic left, but this wasn't his magic, after all. It was a glamour that one of his fathers had buried him under. For all those long, false years.

His skin began to flush from pale cream to deep blue as the glamour retreated. The ancient ancestral scars of the Jotun returned, winding as they became visible. He closed his green eyes, knowing the next time he opened them, they would be blood red.

Was that a gasp? It couldn't have been Hulk. It was his imagination. Oh _Bor's Beard_ , this had only one chance of working. His throat tightened and his eyes burned at the edges, but he ignored them.

The crowd's volume was cut by measures and Loki finally opened his true eyes to face his fate. His icy blue flesh was on display before Hulk, who, to his credit, was not saying anything at all. The trickster's shame was on display for all to see. To gawp at. To jeer.

"I _am_ a monster." Hulk was still. Very still. Time seemed to stand motionless. Slowly, he raised one hand and pressed a finger against Loki's cold chest. As if to check whether he was real or a phantom.   
"Loki like Hulk."   
" _Yes_ ," he seized upon the offering. "Yes, Loki _is_ a monster like Hulk. I've lived a different version of your life." He continued to press, ignoring the twisting in his stomach, the compulsion to vomit, the endless avalanche of anxiety. "I know why Bruce keeps you boxed down. And I also know why he _shouldn't_ ," the volume of his voice grew with his conviction. "I'll advocate for you. You _know_ I will. You and I are alike, always being used like _weapons_ by whomever thinks they have a right to our rage." He was now actively ignoring the shame and angst condensed in his gut. He could only plow forward with his anger: always his keenest weapon. "Ally with me. I'm not saying forever. But for _right now_. Let's break free of this prison. Let's determine our own destiny." 

And then a miracle happened. He could see a solidification of resolution in Hulk's eyes. Whatever drug or potion or spell had blinded him with fury before, it had cleared like mist. Here stood a rational being. Still angry, still seeking vengeance, but now his aim was narrowed to all points other than Loki. It was one of the greatest successes of his long life. Victory flooded the demi-god's arteries with elation and new energy.

"Loki better have plan."  
"Oh, I do." He grinned, fever bright. "We need to cut off the head of this _snake_ first," he pointed upwards to the tower penthouse where Grandmaster was watching the carnage. Hulk grinned devilishly and without a word snatched Loki by the back of his tunic and threw him on one shoulder. His body cried out in pain, but his soul exalted. In the next moment the juggernaut was all fluid, rapid motion, launching from the ground to the outer rim of the arena. Using his momentum, he gripped the barrier and sprang higher into the air. 

One of Loki's arms had been rendered worthless by Kubon. He used the other arm, also in agony, to hang on to Hulk for dear life. Wind and frightened spectators flashed by in a furious blur. He was a comet on a trajectory of violence, strangely precise and controlled. Hulk landed further up the amphitheater and jumped again. Within three or four such leaps, Loki was both lightheaded from the acceleration and dizzy with bliss. What a _thing_ , to ride an animate earthquake! A mythological beast, a great nimble gargoyle. The power whose shoulders he perched upon was nigh impossible to comprehend! A green demon who was now Hel bent on reaching Grandmaster. 

With one fist extended, Hulk punched through the glass of the arena's observation level like brittle ice. Loki spun away from his living pegasus to crouch on the periphery, watching. There was a regal audience gathered in the penthouse deck. It was amusing to see their immediate change of posture: suddenly finding it in their best interest to cower and make themselves small. They moved quickly out of the way of two opposing titans. Hulk snarled and Grandmaster raised his hands in response, both threatening and placating simultaneously. 

"Whoa, big guy. What's the rush? The battle's not over yet. I've got some real fun matches lined up for you. You'll like them, trust me. Much better than this tiny blue disappointment here," he cast a derisive glance in Loki's direction.  
"Trust you?" Hulk growled. "Hulk not remember today. Woke up, Loki there. Grandmaster there. Then nothing until pain." His face contorted further into a grimace, it scarcely seemed possible. "Why Hulk not remember? Hulk _champion_ or Hulk _prisoner_?"

"Ha!" Grandmaster feigned a laugh. " _Prisoner?_ What caustic lies has Asgard been filling your head with? You're not a prisoner! _Sakaar loves you_ , baby. Grandmaster loves you!" But it was too late for mere words.  
"Ross. SHIELD. Grandmaster." He counted off his enemies on fingers like tree trunks. "Hulk choose Hulk fate now." Grandmaster was smart enough to see the futility of further banter. He brandished his scepter at the green beast, but his quick gigantic fist stopped the device, smashing the orb at the end into a million pieces.

As the glass shards fell to the floor, Loki's chest strained with the feeling of trying to swallow a waterfall whole. A delicious, powerful, intoxicating waterfall. Through the shock and immobility that followed, he screamed a silent triumph. Energy flowed through his nerves, lighting all his cells on fire, scrubbing them raw with blistering heat. Whatever trickery Grandmaster had used to hold Loki's magic hostage, the plot had been unraveled with a simple touch of Hulk's mighty hand. He felt whole again, he felt his power and his strength come flooding back like a tidal wave of opportunity. The first thing he did was heal: his carved arm, all the puncture wounds, his nose, the myriad bruises, and the fractured ribs that he'd endured in the arena.

He left his skin dark blue. 

In a blur of motion on the periphery of his awareness, Hulk had snatched Grandmaster with both hands, smashing him back and forth between the mirrored ceiling and the marble floor. Loki could only wince in sympathy, but really, it couldn't have happened to a more deserving creature. The remainder of the dictator's guests fled screaming now that the outrageous violence they'd enjoyed from a distance was close at hand. 

When he grew bored at last, Hulk threw the self-declared god's body away like a ragdoll and turned to Loki with a smile on his face. He certainly must have felt the glory of Loki's power returning through their shared connection. It was a joyous feedback loop of strength and possibility.

"What next?" _Oh Ymir_ , it felt good to be asked that. And by a creature as fearsome as Hulk? It was glorious. A sharp-toothed grin tinged by malevolence and glee split Loki's face in twain.

But there was no time for answers. Grandmaster would not be defeated so easily. His guards opened fire on Loki and Hulk. The sorcerer could not throw up any shield in time, taking glancing wounds to his arms and shoulders through his paltry armor. Instead, he flung himself behind Hulk whose skin seemed impenetrable. The great beast howled at the guards and charged, becoming a maelstrom of fists and feet and gnashing teeth in his own right. They focused their fire on Hulk and Loki was overlooked in the chaos. 

The cobalt-blue king focused his efforts on levitating broken objects and bits of glass scattered about the room, turning them into deadly projectiles. Loki impaled two guards in this manner before the demi-god felt the ground shift under his feet. It was like an ocean wave. He kept his balance only through his natural dexterity. The guards were not so lucky, nor was Hulk. They toppled over like marble statues. The demi-god pivoted and faced down the source of the onslaught: Grandmaster.

The games master was once again on his feet, albeit quite bloody and bruised, and no longer amused in the slightest. He had no further patience for verbal posturing. Instead, with a mere flick of his wrist, the floor and ceiling began doing a lethal dance, crumpling and attempting to crush Loki and Hulk between their surfaces like great gnashing jaws. Tile cracked and powdered on the ground, mirrored glass rained from the roof.

Grandmaster may have tried to spare his guards in the attack, but if he did, it wasn't in earnest. The soldiers were crushed indiscriminately. Their bodies were added to the slaughter, macerated between the living roof and floor like lambs in the maw of some titanic creature. Loki did his best to be lithe lightning, dancing between the points where the building tried to pulverize him, throwing shields up to hold the ceiling back when he couldn't dodge fast enough. Hulk was having no such issues. He simply used his impenetrable bulk to keep the tyrant from crushing him into the floor. The air was thick with blood and dust and screams from Grandmaster's own dying guards. 

Loki finally got his feet underneath him and went on the offense. A clone appeared behind the crazed god, swinging a sword at his undefended spine. Grandmaster turned and waved one hand, dissipating the apparition with half a thought. But Loki was expecting that. It was a poor ruse, no better than a distraction.

Actually, it was exactly that. He dug deep, into his core of ice and cold and bid great glacial daggers to pierce the ground under Grandmaster's feet. The same spikes descended from the ceiling and while the demon managed to dodge their razor edges, his arms were entangled. Hulk finally got his feet under him in the interlude and rushed full speed towards the dictator, unaware of Loki's next move, crashing into the ice and smashing it and Grandmaster into the far wall.

The floor and ceiling ceased their dance and now simply began to merge together. There was no time to strategize or fight back. 

"Hulk!" Loki screamed, bolting for the edge of the penthouse, aiming to jump and figure it out later. The green beast understood half a second too late, turning and running for the rim of the collapsing penthouse. His foot snagged at the juncture where ceiling and floor fused into one solid mass. He roared in anger and pain as the rest of the structure kept squeezing. Loki erected a shield around Hulk's torso to stave off what he could of the inevitable collapse. The green creature twisted and beat at the unforgiving metal and rock and finally freed his leg, bloody but unbroken. With a burst of energy, Hulk erupted from the caved-in building, scooped up Loki still balancing on the edge of the penthouse and launched them both into the air, hundreds of meters above the arena floor. 

The spectators, those fools, had largely remained in their seats, watching the horror unfold. As Hulk fell with purpose through the air, Loki looked back to the observation deck where Grandmaster was buried. But he hadn't buried himself, had he? The question was all too swiftly answered as the melded floor and ceiling split apart again and the demon stood, glaring fire, on the rim of his tower. He raised both arms, cupping some unseen power. Hulk landed on the ground and Loki sprang from his broad shoulders, trying in vain to anticipate the next attack. 

The soil around them arched up from the surface of the slaughterhouse like a living being. Grandmaster shaped the tentacles of earth to strike and smother them both. Hulk smashed, Loki dodged, the crowd cheered, and suddenly the gates on either side of the arena sprang open. All manner of creatures erupted from the bowels of the amphitheater, running onto the main stage, weapons at the ready, roaring and howling and searching for blood.

But it wasn't Hulk and Loki they turned to attack. It was Grandmaster's guards and the bounty hunters in attendance. Was it a prison break? A mutiny? Loki paused for a fraction of a second to spot the rock being Korg, leading the charge. And next to him? Thor?!

"Thor?!" The great oaf's eyes were drawn to him like a magnet.  
"Loki?" He rushed forward, swinging a great axe casually as he ran, taking out half a dozen guards as they amassed on the arena field without pausing for breath. " _Brother!_ " the thunderer cried, approaching him in the chaos of flying dirt and rocks and bloodshed.

Loki was... actually relieved to see him. Bor's Beard, he was disappointed in himself for admitting it. But relieved all the same. As Loki dodged Grandmaster's ground-based attacks and built shields of magic around their growing army of allies, he realized Thor being here meant the crown prince wasn't dead after all. And if he wasn't dead, then Asgard still had a chance against Hela. He wasn't alone in that endeavor or in getting of this rotten realm. Logically, their chances of success in all endeavors had improved.

"I met a friendly stone creature," the thunderer explained in the chaos of the melee. "And we decided you could use a hand against this 'Grandmaster'. So we emptied the prisons of their captives." His smile was so bright, Loki had to squint to look directly at it. He could be grateful for his presence and irritated simultaneously, right? "Why are you so..." his eyes glanced up and down Loki's form, "so blue?"

Oh, Bor's Bollocks...

He'd forgotten he was still clad in his Jotun skin. Thor had never seen him stripped down to his ancestral visage before. The impulse to wrap himself in his Asgardian complexion was hard to ignore, but he choked it down, knowing the monster he truly was underneath was his best chance to continue to ally with the Hulk. Thor's presence didn't change that.

"You see me as I truly am, brother." And then a verbal dagger, to preserve what little of his dignity was left. "Did you not _suspect_ it so? A serpent: both inside and out." But there was truly no time for banter. With a bit of gathered magic and a flick of his wrist, Loki froze the water droplets naturally absorbed in the raging hunks of soil under Grandmaster's control. The solidity helped restrain their motion and destruction. 

"I assume the Bifrost deposited you here, too?" he directed at Thor. "And you have no means of returning to Asgard?" A pang of homesickness caught Loki off guard at the blonde's silent confirmation. "Then we best stick together. I have a plan."

With no further words or contemplation for the mixed emotions swirling in his chest, Loki launched himself back into the melee. Where Grandmaster used the earth and the winds to attack, the Jotun monarch used his own core of power and transmuted the water he could find into ice. He slicked the surface of the soil with atmospheric frost. The guards and prisoners danced a fatal tango on the slippery sheen. He then focused on freezing the internal organs of a squad of guards, killing them from inside out with choked gasps and cries. Thor, despite lacking Mjolnir, still had his innate but limited control of electricity. He arced it between Grandmaster's forces and toppled a dozen bodies at a time.

Things were looking up for the three of them and the newly released prisoners who ached for vengeance. The familiar face of Scrapper 142 vaulted over the fence from the arena seats and joined the fray. Hulk threw his 'Angry Girl' a beaming grin as he realized she had chosen to support him, not her former employer. The bounty hunter executed brilliant martial combinations, knocking legs out from under the Sakaarian guardsmen, cleaving heads, and soaking the ground in still more blood.

She had been an elite solider once. Loki was certain now as he watched her fight, nothing held back. He spared a moment to watch her fluid movements from the corner of his eye. It was an oddly familiar regimen of parries and thrusts, dodging her opponents like an avenging angel and raining unmitigated violence when precisely opportune. She wasted no motions, no energy. A true demon of the battlefield.

But Loki had taken his eyes off Grandmaster, and was about to pay dearly for it.

The tyrant levitated down from his perch above the mayhem, a snarl on his usually placid and jovial face. He landed lightly on the killing floor, toes barely touching the ground. An artificial quake expanded like a shockwave from his body outward as he touched down, making dirt and pebbles dance and knocking the unwary off their feet. A great showman, surely. 

Loki grinned tightly as he kept his balance, not out of amusement, but understanding and anticipating Grandmaster's next attack. He braced himself before casting multiple protective bubbles around his body, Hulk, the bounty hunter, Thor, and as many of the prisoners as he could. His defenses solidified only a millisecond before the demon's attack crescendoed: an evacuation of the local atmosphere. The oxygen in the arena solidified in spheres like marbles, leaving a temporary vacuum in its wake. Without air pressure, eyes and ears bled on indiscriminate faces as friend and foe in the center of the amphitheater grasped at their own throats, gasping for oxygen that simply wasn't there.

Loki could feel the edges of his magic begin to shred under the assault. He'd overstretched his power trying to protect too many allies and the force fields were hardly stable. He watched the dying collapse to the ground outside his defenses, tongues swollen and eyes bulging from sockets. No! He could do this! He'd held a similar sphere for he and Hulk in orbit above Midgard. But this was different. He wasn't fresh now. Not by a long shot. He was overtired and not thoroughly healed and holding back a sorcerer whose magic he was loathe to admit entirely overwhelmed his own.

"Thor...!" he gritted through his teeth at the blonde who was only now becoming aware that the fighting outside his immediate vicinity had completely stopped. Thor's attention gained, Loki gestured with his eyes into the atmosphere above and then to the tyrant who was about to cleave death onto all their heads. Thor's eyes narrowed with understanding and he raised his borrowed axe to the heavens, gritting his teeth and conjuring a great storm not with the might of his weapon, but with his own internal will. It was awe-inspiring. Loki admitted internally that he may have underestimated Thor, too.

It was his turn to attack. In hindsight, Loki found that reaching into his center to conjure arctic ice and cold was much easier clad in Jotun skin than Asgardian. He called for glaciers and snow and the eternity of ancient winters that bled through his veins. His core nature responded with a power that filled his bones and swelled his joints and came bursting as a wild scream through his mouth. His defensive spheres finally gave out and Grandmaster's indiscriminate vacuum rushed in. 

But Thor's tempest had now grown to hurricane strength overhead. Lightning rained down as a cannon of shooting stars and Loki focused his frigid power on those blades of electricity, freezing the humidity carried in the air above the arena. He let Thor's current surge through his chain of icy particles, guiding and wrapping the torrent of energy around the amphitheatre once, twice, to come full circle and spear through Grandmaster's chest. The guided electricity became a great and terrible lance that erupted with the combined rage of the Odinsons, exploding inside the tyrant's finite ribcage.

Grandmaster fell, soundless, and the vacuum covering the arena floor evaporated. The capillaries around Thor's nose and eyes had broken in the half-second of absent atmosphere. He looked as though a great Hulk-sized fist had punched him dead in the face. That was, amazingly, the only damage done to the Asgardian warrior. But others were not so lucky. Bodies strewn across the arena floor, dead and dying, moved slowly, their tepid near-corpses recovering from all manner of violence and Grandmaster's environmental attack.

"Why haven't we done that before?" the thunderer questioned with a hoarse laugh. It was an excellent question. The combination of electricity and ice wasn't something he and Loki had explored previously. But it was certainly worth trying again. 

Loki took a deep breath to take in their temporary victory. Hulk was still on his feet, green skin unmarked. The bounty hunter was steady too, but her face was blotched with broken blood vessels like Thor. Loki couldn't imagine what his blue visage looked like, but didn't spare the energy or time to muse. Already, there was movement on the periphery of his vision: an arm bending from a prone form. A torso struggling to sit up. A megalomaniac straining to extend his iron grip once more. It wouldn't be long before Grandmaster had recovered himself. And Loki didn't want to be anywhere nearby when that happened.

Thor couldn't fly them without Mjolnir, but Hulk might be able to carry them away. If he was willing to abandon the fight. Which would take another feat of Loki's silver tongue.

But then, like a miracle, a wash of turbines overhead threw dust into the air and wiped the field clean of expectation and assumptions. Loki recognized the craft before it set down swiftly in a rough and eager landing. A ramp descended and the cargo bay doors at the back of Samara's shuttle opened.

"Hulk! Thor!" he called, urgency lacing his voice. "...Scrapper? Korg. Our chariot has arrived. I implore all of you to _hurry_." Loki scrambled up the ramp and held his hand out to pull Thor on board, the first to follow his desperate plea. This was their way out. This was their best chance to put distance between them and Grandmaster and figure out their next step. They had precious seconds only. Already the vicious god was awakening, sitting up, shaking his head clear of Thor's electricity which still curled around his hair in short sparks. The window of opportunity was closing.

Korg pulled at his small purple friend and they both stumbled up the ramp. There were too many prisoners, they couldn't save them all. But Loki would at least try for the rock creature who'd shown him mercy in the darkened pit. Hulk shambled after, not certain yet of his tenuous alliance with Loki, but willing to follow his fellow Avenger. The bounty hunter trailed Hulk at a quick pace. She had doubtless discerned the advantage of cutting ties with her former employer. Loki had seen his cruel severity firsthand.

Hulk paused at the bottom of the ramp. He was too big to board. He pushed his shoulder under the doorway, buckling metal to make himself fit.  
"Wait!" Scrapper and Loki implored simultaneously.   
"Hulk, you won't fit. We need Banner. And we need to go. _Now!_ " the dark god commanded.  
"Hulk follow puny rocket ship."  
"No, this vessel is faster than even you. _Trust_ me." Loki winced as he realized the repetition of his words. He had asked the green dragon for so much trust in such a short time. But he needed one more leap of faith. Quickly. "You're coming with us, or..." Loki steeled himself, walking back down the ramp beside Hulk. "Or I'm staying." His craggy chin was set with determination. This was suicide, surely. But mortal danger and dark secrets seemed to be the only way to make Hulk understand.

"Loki go. Hulk stay." A bitter laugh escaped the corners of his blue frown.   
"Don't you _understand?_ I'm here for Banner. If Hulk stays, Loki stays. I'm _not_ leaving without you again. Revert and you can fit. Revert and we can all escape together." His sharp eyes flickered to the ground behind Hulk where Grandmaster's eyes were clearing, murderous intent filling his sharp stare once again. "Please!!" Loki begged and even the bounty hunter could feel the weight of his desperation. She took a half-step down the ramp towards Hulk.

"Hulk. For me. _Please_ ," she wasn't sure what she was asking, but the green behemoth observed her outstretched hand, her warm assurance, and Loki's fearful eyes and then closed his own.  
"Loki better not lie. Hulk and Banner share," he muttered like a mantra. The sorcerer watched with amazement tinged by elation and fear as the monster shrank, emerald skin becoming pale, oversized armor falling to the ground like leaves, wild hair softening into brown curls. Loki caught Bruce in his arms before he could fall and ran back to the ship, yelling at the top of his lungs for Samara to scramble the engines and go! Perhaps it was the volume of his voice, or a bit of magic, or both, but the craft came to life in an instant. The ship lifted from the blood-soaked dirt into the heavens. Loki didn't have presence of mind to stare after Grandmaster. He only had eyes for Bruce, dear Bruce, lovely Bruce, amazingly alive Bruce, who was blissfully comatose in his arms.

At last.

There was a chatter surrounding him: from the bounty hunter, amazed tones, from Thor, deep utterances, most assuredly explanations. The words were lost to him. Full seconds stretched in blessed peace as they sped away from the arena before the craft shivered in terror, lurching to one side in the thin atmosphere. 

Grandmaster.

Loki could feel the maddened god pulling at their escaping ship with the intent of bringing it crashing down. Or perhaps smashing it to bits in mid-air, crushing them inside. Loki could feel his magic. It was throaty, deep and full, and laced with dark visions: each of the escapees sliced apart, skin shredded into ribbons and bleeding like ripe fruit. Throats choking around visceral fluids. Oh, if he could command it so, Grandmaster would certainly make his twisted wishes reality. 

Loki condensed his rage and his terror in abject rejection of Grandmaster's vile fantasies of death. No! He'd used Banner like a puppet, kept him chained like a mindless trophy. Villain! The ancient magic that was inked across Loki's skin and which flowed through his blue veins curdled with energy. He gathered up all the good he could. The feeling right now, of pure elation at the heavy warm mortal weight cradled in his arms. And his outright refusal to let any demon, god, or Norn take him away ever again! _Mine!_

The power came rushing out of Loki's fingertips and his mouth in a great scream, veins pulsing in his forehead and throat, eyes crushed tightly together: successfully pushing back Grandmaster's probing fingers, creating a shockwave that fought back the titan and allowed their expedient escape to continue.

But the massive power he'd thrown at Grandmaster wasn't articulate, it was a blind desperate measure, uncontrolled and spastic. Even as good a pilot as Samara was, she couldn't compensate for the torque that twisted the fuselage. The craft began to roll.

Over and over it tumbled and Loki, Bruce, Thor, Scrapper, Korg and the tiny amphibian creature were thrown from floor to ceiling to wall and back again as the chariot of their escape became little more than a meteor falling back to the darkened plain of Sakaar. The trickster had half a second to establish a defensive shell around the shuttle and its inhabitants before the earth rose uncaring to tear the wings and engines from the machine.

The metal can continued to spin end over end until it finally settled upside down on the barren plain that surrounded the city. The cargo bay doors had been thrown open by the shock, but all of the various goods and detritus the ship carried remained inside due to Loki's protective sphere. There was a wake of mechanical carnage trailing into the night outside, a dry path carved into the hard clay pan behind.

The city lights were far away, thank Idunn. It was further than he'd remembered from his fruitless walk into the desert. The mountains cloaked in darkness were likely closer. All of this appeared to bode well for their survival.

Loki tentatively dropped the sphere and probed the ether for Grandmaster's lurking influence, but there was nothing. For now. Bruce was sprawled across one side of the craft, still blissfully unconscious. Thor was helping the others to their feet, so the demi-god sprang to the cockpit for Samara.

The shuttle was not large, and he tore through the hallway in a matter of seconds, throwing open the door. The tale of her silent absence was suddenly unraveled: the craft's yoke rammed unrepentantly through her sternum, vivid red blood dripping over her armor and across the console.

"Hey, Fresh Meat," she wheezed, a familiar and honeyed tone to her labored breaths. "How's everyone back there?" Loki couldn't help sucking in a breath at her dire condition or the cavalier bravery she tried to muster in the face of impending death. The tear streaks down her cheeks told another story. She was in pain, and afraid. Facing the same horror as every mortal being in the universe.  
"Samara," he started gently, bending down until he was eye level with her immobile form. "Everyone's fine. Nothing too sharp or heavy back there that wasn't already bolted down. I-" he faltered, trying to explain away the unfamiliar feeling of guilt that manifested in his gut.

"Just a scratch, I think," she offered, clearly bluffing. She was beyond his own healing magic now. His powers were feeble in comparison with the healers of Asgard or those of his mother. He could set bones and knit flesh, but her blood was staining everything now, flowing copiously out of her chest with each throb of her doomed heart. It was far too severe. She would be gone in moments.  
"Thank you for coming for me. _For us._ " The earnest honesty flowed from his mouth. "We'd be dead now if not for you."  
"Couldn't leave all the adventure for you. When you didn't show, and I heard... about the 'special' fight night... I figured they'd caught your slow ass." She coughed weakly, blood flecking her lips. Loki grasped her dark hand in his pale grasp. His skin was once again Asgardian. When had that happened? The transition had occurred without his conscious effort. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

"We're getting _off_ this damned rock. Because of you." Samara nodded once before closing her eyes one last time.  
"Don't waste it." Her features became slack, the flow of blood now moved only by gravity. Loki took a moment to recollect himself, taking deep breaths to center his mind for the battle he didn't doubt was still ahead. He hadn't known Samara for long, but she was the first to show him kindness in this relentless realm. And look how he'd returned the favor.

As he stood to return to the damaged cargo bay, his eyes rested on the control panel. The altimeter was broken, frozen in place. 5000. A new record certainly, wrested from Grandmaster's totalitarian control. 

Not one to waste an opportunity ahead of the next encounter, Loki unbuckled the holster from around Samara's inert waist and hurried back to the cargo bay. Bruce was awake now, coming around and blinking hazy eyes to take in the wreckage of their escape. The trickster pushed the gun and holster over to the Scrapper without breaking eye contact. If anyone could use a weapon, it was the remaining bounty hunter in their party. He could tell that the woman couldn't take her eyes off Bruce, either. Even though a streak of jealousy stabbed him in the side, he couldn't blame her for her rapt attention. She'd only just seen the great and familiar green beast retreat into a smaller, more human form for the first time.

Loki approached Bruce slowly, dropping to his knees a pace and a half away.  
"Bruce," he called reverently, cautious not to startle the man he'd searched the galaxy for. Brown eyes met his, questioning and confused and naked to the waist.  
"Loki? Where- where am I?" There was a tension in the air and the silver-tongued deity knew he had to slice it, resolve the fear and uncertainty, and get them all away from the crash site as soon as possible. He chose his words and actions carefully.  
"You're safe," he stressed, pausing for the words to sink in, lies even as they were. "I'm here, Thor is here. Some new friends, too." He watched Bruce's eyes squint and dart around the cabin, trying to focus and take it all in.

"Did we crash?"  
"Yes. I hate to admit it, but we're being pursued by a man whose magic is stronger than mine. He brought down the ship. We are safe, for now. But we need to keep moving. Can you stand?" He rose slowly and extended a hand down to Bruce. Thor, like each of their motley group, was watching Banner and the tableau warily. For different reasons, certainly, but Loki was grateful for their collective silence now.

Bruce's darting vision focused and he grasped Loki's hand, pulling himself to his feet. Loki swallowed down a wholly inappropriate sound at the long-forgotten feeling of the mortal's warm skin on his. There would be time later to revel in the bliss he could feel knocking at the back of his mind and hammering in his chest. Bruce. Bruce in the flesh. Vital. Warm. Alive!

No, there would be time later. Later: when they weren't being chased down by a vengeful being of seemingly omnipotent power. Later...

Oh, sod it! He allowed himself one moment of indulgence. He pulled Bruce close, his arm releasing the scientist's tanned hand to thread through soft brown curls. He pressed their lips together, chaste but with a smoldering yearning coiling underneath his restraint. Bruce. The good doctor. The Avenger. The impossible monster. His mad obsession. His.

 _'Mine,'_ he chanted in his head, to himself only. But the unspoken sentiment wasn't lost on the occupants of the destroyed ship.

He tore himself away from the soft, warm lips he'd dreamt of for unending nights and re-focused through great effort on the task at hand.  
"We've got to leave, _now._ Grab what you can," he directed at the group. Loki turned and fled down the bent ramp, not sparing a look at Thor who was still uncharacteristically silent. Perhaps flabbergasted at Loki's actions towards Bruce. 

That was satisfying, certainly. But he could muse on his victories later.

His feet touched the hard-packed sand and he could feel a snaking, probing energy from another source. It was tenuous, searching. Grandmaster hadn't found them yet, but he was clearly trying. Casting his long, vile gaze over the expansive territory.

There was one option now. Without a craft to take them off world, and with their collective piloting skills in serious doubt besides, Loki could only take them back to the promising portal that he and Samara had found the day before. The strange Sakaaran dawn began to tinge the sky gray. There was light enough to see the sandy earth but little beyond. Loki began to draw complex patterns and runes in the sand with his fingers. He could draw these with magic, yes, but any bit of his craft he used now would doubtless light up their location like a flaming beacon. 

He couldn't simply open a pocket portal to the location he and Samara had scouted. After all, they had only flown overhead, canvassing the landscape. He didn't have a finite point to connect to and what's more, several beings to transport, not only himself. He drew the runes swiftly but with care until it nearly resembled the imprints of the Bifrost. Thor, Scrapper, Korg, and Miek had finished retrieving cargo from the ship. Bruce had found a tunic of sorts and better fitting pants that were tied briskly around his waist. They were now all gathered around Loki, silent and expectant, waiting for him to finish.

"A blade," he prompted at the group and the woman was first to react. She unsheathed a dagger from her calf and offered its wooden handle to him. Loki wasted no time, drawing the edge across his palm and wringing the flowing blood over three key points on the perimeter of the glyph. As the last drop hit the sand, it sparked to life, the drawn lines humming softly with conjured energy.

"On the other side is a portal we found. I and Samara: the pilot. It will lead us off planet, I have no doubt. But we have to get there, first. Thor," he prompted and the thunderer wasted no time in stepping forward, familiar with the designs Loki had drawn on the earth. He turned back to address Loki before he crossed the portal.

"I feel as though a great portion of this story has been left out. You owe me details, brother." He turned to speak to the others. "But I do agree the god-king in the city center is our enemy. And our best way home is through Loki's enchantments and paths. I trust you, brother." And with a foolish and solemn nod, he strode into the humming glyph and disappeared.  
"Bruce," Loki called. "We need to move. Grandmaster knows where to find us now. He's searching as we speak. We need to leave before he arrives." The doctor, to his credit, as flustered and confused as he was and clearly alarmed at the words 'off planet', nodded quickly and stepped into the glyph following Thor.  
"Korg, Miek, Scrapper. I'm asking for your trust, but I won't beg it. Come with us or stay, the choice is yours." Korg shrugged and stepped up, Miek trailing behind him.  
"You couldn't pay me to stay behind," he quipped lightly. "I'm a lover, not a fighter." The two gladiators stepped across the runes and blinked out.

"Loki." She leveled her dark eyes at him, voice boiling with unsatisfied fight. "I know _of_ you. And I don't trust you one bit." She was toe to toe with him now, unblinking and hard. "Thor is a fool to give you his trust. Hulk or Bruce, too. You're a snake. And I'm watching you."  
"Are you coming, or not?" Loki whined in an over-burdened cadence. She sighed, but stepped to the glyph as well.  
"Better the devil I know..." she murmured, stepped over the runes, and was gone. Loki didn't spare a second more, not even to exhale. He gently roused a bit of wind into the air and stepped into the glyph as well, shutting it behind him and trusting the conjured wind to obfuscate the designs drawn in the sand.

****


	21. Chapter 21

"This is an alien planet?" Bruce's pitched voice hit his ears as Loki stepped through the disintegrating portal. He trapped the beginnings of a smile where it started on his face. Of course. This was the doctor's first experience outside of the sometimes suffocating realm of Midgard.  
"Alien for all of us, truthfully." Thor answered. "I'm struck by the feeling that Sakaar is not the native home for most who live here."  
"That's true," the bounty hunter piped up as Loki exhaled, feeling no touch of the Grandmaster here. The valley where they had transported to was nestled between the mountains, far outside of the central city. The dimensional warp they needed was here, he only had to locate it and probe its depths.

"I wasn't born here. Nor you," she gestured towards Korg but meaningfully avoided Miek.  
"Where are you from?" Bruce questioned. Loki continued to search, pushing his consciousness out for hints of power, imbalance, as the conversation continued on the periphery of his awareness. "You seem human, but... clearly not?"  
"I could say the same about you, Hulk." She jabbed, semi-friendly. "What species are you? Some shapeshifter?" Bruce chuckled lightly, bitterly.   
"Ah, so you saw my party trick? Despite appearances, I'm 100% Homo sapiens. Just had a bad encounter with some gamma rays." She clicked her tongue in response.   
"Could've fooled me. You... don't remember me?"  
"Sorry, no. When the Other Guy is in control, I'm not aware of much of anything." There was a pregnant silence as she contemplated. "Do I... does he... know you?"

"Yeah. Hulk and me... we trained together off and on. You're..." she chose her next words wisely, Loki could tell. "You're two minds in the same body?"  
"Essentially," Bruce oversimplified. "I'm glad Hulk had a friend." Loki wasn't watching, but he could tell the smile in Bruce's words quickly turned into a frown. "What?"  
" _Had_ a friend?"  
"Has? Had? I mean..."  
"What the good Doctor Banner means is he often doesn't control the shift between him and his green self." Thor jumped in. Loki's back was turned and he didn't have to hide the grin that spread across his face. This was one awkward conversation he was happy to not be part of.

The dark god wandered out of earshot then, letting the odd group delve deeper into dysfunction without his influence. Better to focus on finding the dimensional rift. He could poke holes for his enjoyment later. A strange feeling of contentment settled into his chest as their odds improved. He scrambled up rocks and down banks, following some tantalizing and amorphous scent. 

Scent? It wasn't half that. A feeling. A twinge. A suggestion. Some intimation of power that drew him further and further from the spot where the glyph had set them after the crash. A sound of running water reached his ears and the itch in his belly amplified. It was here. A pocket of water, not even enough for a pond, settled between the cliffs, fed by a small trickle that dropped from the surrounding peaks. The compulsion pulled him forward until he found himself wading into the water, which swiftly became waist deep belying its apparent dimensions. 

He could almost see it then, so he held one hand in front of his face, palm out. The air shimmered under his touch. Loki was careful not to apply magic to probe its depths before he had to. He had to be stealthy. Instead, he plucked Scrapper's dagger from his belt and pushed it into the rift. He withdrew it, and the blade was still intact.

Thank Idunn.

The portal certainly could have been a pocket that opened into a sheer face of stone or the center of a star, or a million other impossible places. It could still empty into the far end of the void, but this was at least progress in the right direction.

He tentatively plunged one finger in, testing the waters as it were. Loki still didn't want to use magic to probe the other side for habitability, and a finger was an acceptable sacrifice if it came down to it. But it didn't feel cold on the other side, and it wasn't burning fire, either. His nerves transmitted a tepid feeling back to his brain from the other side of the galaxy. When he pulled his finger back, it was not pockmarked with broken blood vessels or frozen, or burnt, or wet.

A temperate gaseous atmosphere then. That was reassuring.

"Loki!" He heard his name from Thor's imbecilic mouth, crashing and cascading over the rocks. He spun to face his adopted brother, exhibiting not a drop of finesse as he led the rest of their band over the trail that Loki had trod.  
"Yes?" he whispered acidly. "Here I am. No need to carry our names and voices all the way back to the eager ears of the city."  
"Did you find it?" Thor's voice was quieter, but still loud, drowning out the gentle song of the stream.  
"It would appear so", he beckoned, arms raised, still standing in the middle of the water. "Come in, I need a willing volunteer."

At Loki's sly tone, Thor finally paused, half in and half out of the small pool.   
"For what?"  
"To test the portal. A blade passes through unblemished and my hand is undefiled. But I need a larger test subject. I would myself," he explained, affecting a casual stance, "but if I lose an arm, who will find us another option off this realm?"

Thor heaved a heavy sigh. It was clear he wasn't happy with Loki's logic, but couldn't argue all the same.  
"I'll do it," Korg piped up. "You both sprang us from prison. It's the least we can do to help."  
"I appreciate the offer, friend." Loki offered him a genuine smile. "But as a creature composed of primarily stone, your sacrifice will do little to ensure the environment is safe for those of us with softer constitutions." The creature at his feet chirped.  
"Aw, Miek, you don't have to." The All Speak was clearly not functioning, but Korg was only too happy to translate. "Miek says he'll do it. He's not much of a fighter, and he's plenty pliable and organic." Loki was touched at the small creature's willingness to tread into unforeseen landscapes. It wasn't easy being small and defenseless and often overlooked.

"Just one appendage first, Miek." He instructed and Korg translated. "It's not worthwhile to test it without some caution, especially if there's no ground below and no way back."  
The purple alien slithered into the water, keeping his head just above the surface. He dutifully stuck one of his arms into the rift, pulling it back only when Loki finally nodded his head.  
"Yeah, no worries. He says it seems fine. Want me to hold him in for a better look?" Loki nodded in agreement and Korg picked up the smaller creature, plunging Miek's whole body and the majority of his craggy arms into the portal. After a few moments, he pulled back and Miek reappeared, no apparent damage done.  
"Really?" he replied to the stream of chittering. "Miek says the air is sweet and it looks habitable."

"That's good enough for me," Thor answered, temper fraying ever so slightly at his bravery being shown up by a small quadruped. "I don't relish staying here any longer than necessary. Shall we go, Loki?"

It was gratifying to be the one their group looked to for guidance, direction. He knew he shouldn't bask in the feeling, but he was a flawed creature, after all.

"Yes, with all haste." The sorcerer gestured grandly at the invisible space in the air the portal occupied and Thor grabbed his pack from the dry rocks, stepping through without a glance back.  
"Let's go, Miek!" Korg cried out joyfully, picking up his friend and charging through.  
"Is it safe, Loki?" Bruce questioned, stepping slowly into the water. He was wholly unsettled by the idea of crossing unknown magic doors from one alien planet to another. One potentially even more strange and disconcerting.  
"As safe as I can make it, my love. I'll be right after," he promised, knowing his eyes were as clear and wide and open as he could muster. It wasn't easy, but with Bruce, it was a necessity.

The doctor waded into the cold water, hands full of equipment he'd hauled from Samara's craft. It soaked through his tunic and goosepimpled his arms but then he was through and only Loki and Scrapper remained.

She didn't say a word, simply fixing him with a murderous glare and shaking her head as she waded into the water.  
"What plot could there be?" he shot bitterly, tired of her suspicion. "I've sent all in the universe who are dear to me ahead of you. Either you'll be sound on the other side, or you'll join their bloated corpses." A cold and unintentioned chill shot through Loki's body at his own words. "And then we both lose."  
"There will come a time, soon, when I no longer follow your lead," she warned.

Before she stepped through, Loki grabbed her arm.  
"Who are you, exactly? If you know me, if you know Thor, then you must be from the branches of Yggdrasil. Maybe even from Asgard. What harm is there in telling us your real name?" She snatched her arm away roughly and continued towards the portal.  
"In my experience, the less information the Royal Family has, the better one's own fortunes."

 _Ymir give me strength..._ There was cryptic, and then there was this bounty hunter. Loki scanned the area around the portal once more and, satisfied no trace of Grandmaster's awareness had reached their escape route, stepped backwards through the rift.

****


	22. Chapter 22

The rocky pool and the morning light of Sakaar faded out of view and a dark forest on a new planet met Loki's eyes. It was either evening here or perhaps the atmosphere perpetually held a reddish tinge. He took a tentative breath and, feeling no poison in the air, turned around, half expecting to see the bloated corpses he'd callously joked about arrayed in front of his gaze as cruel payment from the Norns.

But it was blessedly not so. Thor was chatting with Miek, propped against a tree, Korg facilitating. Scrapper and Bruce were inspecting the strange flora, in various stages of amazement and wonder at being alive to experience a wholly new planet.

There was no ominous fog surrounding them and, despite Samara's death and the brutality they'd suffered in the killing ring and the narrowness of their escape, Loki found himself collapsing to his knees in relief.

"Thank Bor," he whispered, just satisfied for a moment to simply be alive, to be successful against all odds in their flight, to have finally gotten off that rubbish heap of a planet, and to be one step closer to Asgard.

And then his eyes focused on the bounty hunter and Bruce. Being friendly, yes, but standing _far_ too close and being far too familiar for his liking. The visceral need for reconciliation and the vicious blades of envy roused the demi-god to his feet. Loki crossed the space in three swift strides and caught Bruce by the shoulders, spinning him into his embrace and kissing him violently, pressing their lips together until he was sure they would bruise. There was nothing but Bruce now, nothing that mattered except devouring him, pulling him as close as he could until their bodies were melded together and tearing them physically apart ever again would be a laughable impossibility. 

The mortal was _his_. Only his. Oh, Idunn. He had defied the very Fates to find him. He'd probed the depths of Hulk's dangerous mind and borne so many countless and patient days on Asgard in desperation, doing his best to not give in to hopelessness. He'd exposed his darkest shame to millions. He'd torn himself apart and tattooed his flesh back together. 

No, it was impossible that the one being in existence who melded to his own raw broken shell, whose frame was just as jagged and monstrous as his, had been stripped away from him forever by the cruel justice of beings as petulant as spoiled children.

No - _no_ , he'd been victorious in his long-suffering and Bruce was here _now_ , firm flesh under his hands. Soft lips under his teeth. A pulse that ran fever bright under his palms. Pliant lips that opened at his command. Silken curls that slid over his fingers. Oh, his wondrous locks! He would kiss this mortal man until they both had no further need for oxygen. Until the stars died in their orbits. Until the Norns themselves perished.

"Wow," the deadpan utterance of a buzzing fly pierced his desperate thoughts. "You have managed to surprise me _four_ times today, Trickster." The bounty hunter leaned back against the trunk of a tree, appraising the kiss-swollen lips on Bruce's face and the murderous look Loki threw her way. He dearly wished she would simply be set aflame.

"Brother," Thor chimed in, "I did not know..."  
"No. You didn't," he spat at the thunderer, softening his vice grip on Bruce's shoulders with some measure of regret. "And you didn't have to," he murmured. "But now you do, and what business is it of yours?!" Thor threw up his hands, surrendering all but the wicked smile that split his face.  
"No business! No matter. But I am glad you and Banner have found happiness together. And... I cannot wait to convey the good news to _Tony Stark_." Thor fell into peals of laughter but kept one wary eye on Loki, expecting retaliation. "No attempt to stab me? You truly have changed, brother. I am _happy_ for you."  
"I am glad of it, but there's no need for retribution," his voice was cool, without heat. "Your threat is empty. I already told Stark."

"You did?!" Thor and Bruce echoed. Thor's face remained ashen, but Bruce broke into an uncharacteristic fit of giggles.  
"Oh god. I wish I would have been there for that conversation." Bruce suddenly sobered. "You know, he and Fury both knew. About us. That's why I had the Thorazine capsule under my skin."  
"I thought that was only Fury's doing," Loki's eyes narrowed dangerously, imagining a thousand ways to end the billionaire's life.  
"I-I don't think Tony knew about that. He just fed Fury the info. I..." Bruce backed against a tree, the immensity of all that had elapsed finally overwhelming him. 

"I'm not going to hold it against Tony until I have a chance to talk to him." He glanced up at Loki, fixing him with a stare full of ice and questions. "There's a _lot_ I don't know right now, and I'm trying my damnedest to reserve judgement until I have all the facts." By Bor, what he did mean by that? A cold stone began to sink in Loki's stomach.

"There's a lot I don't know either," Thor chimed in. "I lost count in the fight and our subsequent flight. Did we lose our pilot?" Loki pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation and a measure of guilt.  
"Indeed. She didn't survive the crash."  
"I'm sorry, Loki. I'm very glad she came to your rescue." His tone was leading and Loki took the bait. He sat down again, falling onto a rotting log to recount his story. Ymir knew part of him wanted to. Thor should know. Bruce needed to.

He broke down the high points of his journey from Midgard to Sakaar, including his intimidation of Director Fury for his treatment of the doctor but leaving out more delicate points such as the state in which the Norns had found he and Bruce and the specific memory that had sent Bruce into an anguished rage. And the manner in which he'd spent the long nights in Asgard, bereft of hope.

Thor shared his half of the story as well. Grandmaster had intended him to fight the Hulk after Kubon had successfully killed Loki. It was not to be, and just as well. 

The blonde prince continued with his story, managed to conjuring a draught of grief for Loki to sip at the retelling of Odin's death. The demi-god had successfully delayed thinking about it too deeply or contemplating the wild morass of emotions that stirred within him until now. 

No: he could continue bottling it down. Bruce's safety was his primary objective. Thor was alive and well, so that was one responsibility off his plate. After they were well away from Grandmaster, he'd focus on retaking Asgard from Hela. Anything else, certainly any introspective musings on the nature of fatherhood and betrayal, could wait indefinitely.

Through the retelling, the group had trekked along a forest trail, putting a measure, albeit rather a paltry distance, between themselves and the portal back to Sakaar. The likelihood of Grandmaster finding that specific portal was slim. But if he did, it would take more than a few kilometers of distance to prevent their discovery. No one had energy to dwell on this fact and each silently hoped they would find a way off this jungle planet soon enough, either by ship or by portal, further obfuscating their trail.

They had come across a glade ideal for camp, rock wall on one side providing a mild strategic advantage. The red sky had further deepened until Loki lit a few branches aflame, creating makeshift torches which encircled their temporary repose. Bruce was amazingly still on his feet. Perhaps all the pampering Hulk had received under Grandmaster's beneficence bolstered his fortitude now.

Bruce, Miek, and Korg gathered firewood while Thor and the bounty hunter foraged for edibles in the undergrowth. Loki meditated and drew energy from the surrounding environment into his core, replenishing the substantial output he'd spent earlier in the day. Or rather, earlier that night? Their circadian rhythms were entirely off, having departed Sakaar in the early morn and arriving in this realm in the deep evening. It was likely for the best: they were all in various states of exhaustion.

Bruce and Korg arranged the firewood and stacked the meager surplus, while Loki kindled the fire with half a thought and curated the flame into a well-behaved beacon of light and warmth.

Thor and Scrapper returned with various fungi and a few snared rabbits which Bruce ate with surprising reluctance.  
"Hulk's not a vegetarian. But I am. But... I'm also desperately hungry..." he winced and took a tender bite from one cooked hare.

The strange group all settled down for the night. Loki had just enough energy to pluck a hammock and a blanket from his dimensional pocket. The men deferred the hammock to the bounty hunter and Thor insisted Banner take the blanket. The others simply curled up on the bare ground.

"I'll take the first shift," Loki offered uncharacteristically. But it was in his best interest. He didn't trust the bounty hunter and the highest risk of being ambushed by Grandmaster or the natives of this realm was over the next few hours. Then he would concede the watch to Thor. And then the sun or its analogue here would rise and their search for a civilization or another portal would begin in earnest.

One by one, the rest fell asleep. Bruce dozed next to him, curled closely, sharing the edge of the blanket. He was not quite awake but not tired enough to sleep.

"Rest, Bruce. We'll all need it in the morning," He combed his pale fingers through the doctor's curls. "And we might need the Hulk, too," he added gently. "I sincerely hope not, but we need to use all of our advantages until we're back on familiar soil."

"I still can't believe I'm here," he murmured, brown eyes casting aimlessly into the fire. "On a new planet. Well, two new planets. And that the Hulk had taken the driver's seat for so long." He shivered involuntarily. "Giving him control again scares the shit out of me. How long will he keep it next?"  
"I understand. He was reluctant to give you the helm as well. You both need to find a way to share your reality. I fear otherwise, this awful stalemate will exist with both sides desperately gripping control at any opportunity and keeping it for as long as possible." A soft smile creased Loki's face as his thoughts shifted. "I think Hulk is warming up to me. Certainly, he likes his 'Angry Girl', but we made some progress, he and I."

"Really?" Bruce sat up now, intrigued. "That's... that's great." He smiled wistfully, as if afraid to hope for too much. "By 'Angry Girl', I assume you mean Scrapper 142?" Loki nodded. "I was wondering why she was being friendly to me... for no reason at all? That doesn't happen. People aren't nice to each other without some expectation or something to gain." His tone was mildly bitter now.

"I don't fully trust her, either. There's a past that involves Asgard that she won't detail. But as much as she and I despise each other, I don't think her intentions towards you are untoward. Rather... I think she'd like to have you and Hulk for herself." The coals of jealousy began smolder again.  
"Really?" there was a lilt to his voice that Loki didn't like. "That's... highly improbable. ...Trust me," he laughed, self deprecating.  
" _Highly_ improbable? I don't agree with your judgement at all. After all," Loki turned his face from the fire to regard the steadfast mortal at his side and his heart filled with emotions he was only starting have the courage to name in the light of day. "I share the sentiment a thousand times over." The deepening of his voice pulled Bruce's eyes from the fire to lock with Loki's green irises. He swallowed heavily, bottom lip gripped between his teeth as a million thoughts passed behind his mortal gaze. 

The demi-god could read him so well now. All his wonderful little ticks. All his half-buried emotions. Bruce had been within his mind, and he in Bruce's. And the connection forged in their blood still ran thickly, renewed by their proximity over the last few hours. Loki licked his lips slowly, deliberately. Bruce's breath hitched audibly in his throat and the sorcerer could only chuckle.

"Do you know how long I've dreamt of seeing you again? Touching you? _Ravaging_ you?" Bruce's eyes fluttered and a blush blossomed over his cheeks in the low light. "Come help me gather some firewood. I think you need a lesson in probability and logic, Doctor Banner." His voice was silky smooth, enticing and undeniable. Loki stood and offered Bruce his hand, pulling him to his feet. The sorcerer spared half a thought to create a clone of the doctor, resting by the fire under the blanket, deep in apparent slumber. 

He led Bruce into the forest until darkness cloaked them. Until the flames of the campfire were a small dot through the leaves. Then he turned and pushed Bruce against the trunk of a tree, providing no advance warning for the pleasant onslaught. A reservoir of bottled frustration and longing spilled out of his hands and mouth as blind lust. Bruce had half a second to gasp, an achingly delicious sound, before Loki covered mouth with lips, devouring him from the outside in.

He was a creature of desperation and he knew it, but he couldn't slow himself down. His lips trailed down Bruce's neck to the pulse point, beating rapidly. He licked and sucked greedily and was rewarded by sighs falling from the scientist's lips like sweet wine. He grasped Bruce's stubbled chin and licked along his ear, stopping to nibble at one lobe before turning his attention back to his lips, his tongue. Bruce's knees suddenly gave out in bliss. Loki caught him with a strand of magic, pressing him back into the tree and securing him without hope of reprieve.

"Mine," he whispered, a god driven mad moments before taking handfuls of Bruce's tunic and tearing it to shreds with his own might. He felt Bruce's solid erection against his thigh throb in response. Oh Idunn, he wanted this. They both did. He craved Bruce with an ache that burned down to his core. There was no power in the universe that could take the mortal away now. He pulled his fingers across Bruce's warm exposed chest, reveling in the feeling of flesh solidly under his palms. He was here, he was _real._ He wasn't the figment of some desperate dream he forbade himself to remember. He wasn't dying or dead or worlds away, locked out of his life forever by petulant forces that feigned omnipotence. 

He was here. He was his.

Mine. All mine. Mine, mine, _mine!_

Loki knew what he wanted. He dropped to his knees, intending to take Bruce as thoroughly as he could under the rough circumstances. Unfettered from glasses, Loki observed those chocolate eyes, pupils blown wide, open dramatically. The mortal's breath stuttered in surprise. He started calling out to a higher power, and the verbal worship just drove Loki more fervently onwards.  
"Oh god, oh my god," Bruce choked out as the sorcerer slowly, delicately untied his makeshift trousers, reveling in his own boiling lust and the vicious need to hear more adoration from this creature. His.

"Yes," he hissed, triumphant. He stared up at Bruce benevolently, words defying the rich tone of his voice. "Beg me, Bruce. Beg me and I will make you see heaven and earth." The mortal's eyes closed, overcome. His head rocked backwards for support against the tree.  
"Oh god, Loki. Oh my god. I'm going to come and you haven't even..." he couldn't bring himself to finish his own sentence, overwhelmed by the mere sight of the demi-god kneeling before him, offering him a glimpse of Valhalla via his warm satiny mouth.

"No, I haven't. Not yet. I haven't licked over your eager flesh. I haven't sucked you between my lips. But I'm going to. And you're going to understand, my love, that when I say I will light the world on fire for you, _I mean it._ " Bruce moaned desperately. Loki's hands were still on his thighs. His erection still swelling, restrained.

Finally, he was merciful. The demi-god snaked Bruce's trousers down, freeing his eager cock and exhaling across the urgent head with damp breaths. As his lips met the weeping tip for a brief moment before opening his mouth and drawing Bruce down, the doctor cried out, wordless and wracked with pleasure.

Loki's careful tongue slid over his throbbing flesh, pulling him deep into his mouth and then without preamble to the back of his throat. It was abrupt and cruel treatment for any mortal man, he knew. But especially one as touch-starved as his doctor. But he couldn't help himself. The absence had carved a hole in his chest that screamed to be filled. In reaction, Bruce carded his hands into Loki's hair unconsciously, trying to ground himself against the onslaught of pleasure. It was the action of a man now relying on pure instinct, unable to reach for higher faculties. Perfect.

The warm weight of Bruce pressed down on Loki's tongue and he allowed himself to linger and lathe the underside of his cock. The demi-god took his time, sucking languidly and bobbing his head, enjoying the gratifying sounds and sighs the mortal emitted with each breath, with each touch. He set an inexorable and slow rhythm that had the doctor breathing raggedly with each stroke. Loki wouldn't ignore his tight balls either, skin stretched gloriously taut, absolutely begging to be licked and caressed. The doctor's fingers were entrenched in Loki's long locks and curled like talons, aware of the tension they were delivering to his scalp. But only just.

It was delicious, the thoroughness in how he was breaking the mortal down to animal reactions. Making that sharp, powerful brain stop and stutter. Forcing his lips from language to mere guttural sounds of pleasure. Loki returned his attention to Bruce's cock and began sucking in earnest, unable to delay his gratification further. He wanted to see the doctor utterly laid bare, at his basest and most raw. His most real. Bruce's flesh grew slightly larger in his mouth and Loki had the sudden terrifying notion that his cock was turning green as his control unraveled, so close to climax.

"Jesus christ... Loki... I'm... Oh god..." the words were gasped between breaths, rushed, a harried man whose concept of pleasure was being overwritten with each fresh second. In another moment, he gripped Loki's hair hard and snapped his hips, uncontrolled, into the dark god's mouth, emptying his pleasure and releasing his boundless tension in a long, low moan that roused the sleeping forest for one unbroken moment. 

Bruce sagged against the tree, still human, and utterly spent. Loki licked delicately over his satiated flesh, opting to use his tongue rather than magic to lightly clean the aftermath from Bruce's flushed skin. The doctor hadn't transformed, and that was very much a blessing. Loki licked the sides of his own mouth where the evidence of the doctor's pleasure dripped down his pale chin. 

"Good god, Loki..." he exhaled out in one great breath. The sorcerer rose to his feet, cradling Bruce's chin and kissing him down, bringing him back to reality slowly, gently.   
"If you think I'm sated, think again," the fallen king whispered into Bruce's mouth. Loki kissed him more fiercely now, drawing out his own passion and making up, by meager measures, for all the nights he'd been forced to patience and despair and quiet pining alone. "But not tonight. Tonight, our energies are best conserved so tomorrow's search is as fruitful as possible." That was half true. Bruce met his mouth with a half moan, half whimper.

"Oh, Loki, _please_ let me..."  
"No, not now," he whispered, conspiratorial. "There will be ample opportunity later." He threaded his fingers through the doctor's hair, pulling his head back slightly and exposing his tender throat to the night air. "Trust me in this. I tell you: it is as if I am dying of thirst and you've offered me a single glass of water. I _will_ drink my fill of you, over and over again. But no more tonight. Let's return to camp."

Bruce shuddered at his words and groaned his disappointment but gave in, tying up his pants and struggling to make sense of his now shredded tunic. It was absolutely ruined. Loki chuckled and drew one finger in the air, conjuring a shirt. If it happened to be a button down, and the precise plum shade of purple that reminded him of days past, neither man commented on Loki's choice. The sorcerer then wound his hand into a pocket dimension, rifling through various possessions.

"This is for you," he offered, pulling out a pair of glasses. "I stole them from Stark's tower before being recalled to Asgard."  
"Thank you," Bruce murmured, genuinely touched that the sorcerer would remember something as benign as his eyeglasses. With the slim fitting shirt and the glasses and his kiss-tousled hair, he was a sight Loki's eyes couldn't help but linger on as the men strode back to the campfire.

****


	23. Chapter 23

"Ah, there you are," Thor was awake, stoking the coals of the fire that was nearly extinguished. "Doctor Banner happened to dissolve before my eyes a minute ago. I knew you had a hand in it Loki," he chastised his younger brother. "But I'm glad you decided to bring him back rather than simply abandon us."

"Always so suspicious, Thor?" Loki crouched by the fire, slightly miffed that while the clone of Bruce had temporarily fooled Thor, his scheming had been ultimately unveiled. "We simply went to gather firewood. I'm not about to abandon you. Well, not yet," he teased.  
"Hmmm. Then where is the tinder? I see you and Banner are both empty handed." He cast a sly knowing smile at the two of them. Loki could only roll his eyes in response while Bruce turned a delightful shade of scarlet.

"Heh, I-I can go get some more wood," Bruce offered, rising to his feet.  
"No need," Thor held up a hand to stop him. "It's nearly morn. I'll take this shift. You and Loki had best get some rest while you can." He grinned again, only too happy to watch the dark god's visage transform into an annoyed glower. "I'm sure you're both quite tired by now."

"Oh come off it, Thor," Loki sneered. "I would have thought you'd be thrilled by my attachment to Midgard. Now I have a reason not to commit widespread genocide on its inhabitants." His smile was filled with teeth and cruel, all for Thor's benefit.  
"Ha, yeah, that is lucky..." Bruce chimed in warily, eyes widening, unsure if Loki was exaggerating or not. Ah, it was entertaining to keep the mortal on his toes. His mortal. Only his. There was truth to his admission of attachment.

"It seems that you also have a tie to Jotunheim, or am I wrong about that?" Oh, Bor's tits! He knew the thunderer would circle back to that fertile topic sooner or later.  
"You're not wrong. I assume Odin told you of my true parentage?" he uttered, bitterness creeping into his voice despite his attempts to remain neutral.  
"Yes, but the evidence was also clearly on display." Bruce's eyes darted back and forth between the two of them, slightly lost.  
"And what is your verdict, _Odinson?_ "  
"I... I care not, Loki," Thor admitted with a sigh. "You are still my brother. Our blood runs deeper than the color of your skin." While deep down, he appreciated the sentiment, the demi-god couldn't help the sneer that plastered over his face at the not-so-subtle reminder of his genetic inferiority. And so soon too, after his pleasurable interlude with Bruce. Thor never managed to exercise good timing.

"Besides," Thor continued unabated, "you can conjure some quite intriguing magic when clothed in your native visage. I've never seen you wield ice and frost like that before. I think that's a significant tactical advantage. One we may need soon enough." Loki let the mild compliment fall over his shoulders and wash away a modicum of his irritance.  
"Quite true, Thor. I..." he struggled for the right words, a novelty. "Could see some benefit to a combined strategy when we face Hela." Bruce made a sound, a half-word, and both Asgardians turned to face him with strikingly similar looks of perplexion.

"Loki?" The mortal leaned in close, eyes darting, voice conspiratorial. "Did... did you..." he struggled for words and Loki let him. "Turn... blue? Turn... uh... Jotun?" He remembered only too well that Bruce had seen into his memories, seen his shame and fear at Odin's revelation. The truth that he had been born a monster. The knowledge then had made him boil in shame, but Bruce had taken it in stride and offered him placidity and understanding: par for his thoroughly implausible nature. 

But then, what could the mortal really know or comprehend of the thousands of years of repulsion, lies, and derision that drove his internal self-loathing?

"Yes. It was not entirely by choice. Suffice to say, a significant personal sacrifice was necessary to endear the Hulk to my plight. He... appreciated that he wasn't the only monster in Grandmaster's charnel house." That sufficiently summed it up. Loki ground his teeth together, searching for a way to steer the conversation in another direction. Bruce wasn't ready to see his cobalt skin firsthand. Not ready to come face to face with his grotesque exterior. And more importantly, Loki wasn't ready for Thor and Bruce to dissect him like an insect together at their leisure. Their shared observation made his skin crawl even now.

"Our sister is a formidable creature, that much is clear." Thor brought the conversation back to the matter at hand. "Heimdahl has offered me glimpses of what is occurring in Asgard. She is drawing her strength from the very rock of our home." A pained look crossed the blonde's face. "And she is besieging and persecuting our people for what she imagines were Odin's slights." Despite the awful situation, Loki felt the edges of his mouth quirk upwards in amusement. "Have care, brother," Thor answered his silent smile. "Our father was not always right or virtuous, but Hela is another shade of malevolence altogether." The sorcerer decided to let Thor's paternal comments slide.

"At least Heimdahl is talking to you. I've heard nothing of Asgard's plight." A wounded tinge colored Loki's voice.  
"Perhaps that's because _you_ unseated him from his eternal task." Thor was all high and mighty now, and the dark god could only glower in response.

"Hela's returned?" a quiet voice emanated from the hammock on the other side of the quelled fire.  
"Yes," Thor answered the female bounty hunter but did not elaborate, using his silence to prompt her to further questions. It was a good technique, one Loki didn't expect the blonde oaf to be able to appreciate, let alone use.  
"I'd say you two have your work cut out for you," she replied, filling the empty air reflexively.  
"You know her?" Bruce offered, ever the impatient mortal.   
"I do. The Queen of Death makes many enemies." Well perhaps the three of them together could finally piece together the origins of this reticent Scrapper.  
"She was entombed by the All Father. It seems he did not bury her deep enough," Loki added, entreating.

The bounty hunter looked uncertain, on the cusp of sharing information or assembling further queries. Her eyes cast from side to side, uncomfortable and wary.  
"No one thought to grab any liquor from Sakaar, did they?"  
"Sorry," Bruce frowned. Loki and Thor both sat in patient quietude, watching the woman grow increasingly agitated by the silence.  
"I can't go back there," she finally stated. "Actually, I _won't_ go back there. Asgard is no longer my home. It failed me. Why should I want to save it now?" Her halting dialog, more for her own benefit than anyone else's, provided no illumination for Loki. Thor was quicker, however.

"You're a Valkyrie," he stated, confident.  
" _Was_." She corrected him in no uncertain terms. Now it all made sense. Her military carriage, her deft violence, even the effects of copious drink Loki had seen. He assumed it was simply a side-effect of her present employment. No more.  
"I thought the Valkyrie all died horrific deaths," Loki prompted, hoping to stab at her and elucidate more information. The Scrapper fired a bitter look at the demi-god, wounded and begging him to throw more salt, only so she might have an excuse to put a blade to his throat.

"It appears not all," Thor offered with measured breath, trying to disarm the situation.  
"What's a Valkyrie? Like Wagner's Valkyrie?" Bruce questioned. He received confounded stares from the three Asgardians, holding his palms in the air to admit defeat. "Uh, never mind..."

"They were an elite cavalry unit that rode at Odin's command into the fiercest battles you can imagine. They were Asgard's winged champions, the vanguard which the Einherjar followed. We grew up hearing their tales sung loudly, proudly." Thor had the shadow of a smile on his face at the happy memory.  
"That's one version of it," she sneered. "Yes, we rode on Odin's command. Even when it was suicide. I was the only one who survived Hela. She murdered everyone. I escaped, but..." She let her next words die on the air. An uncomfortable pause filled the air. "If you're aiming to stop her: without the Valkyrie, without Odin, yourselves at only half-strength..." Who said they were at half-strength? "You're asking for an early grave."

"Help us, then. You know her games better than any of us," Thor tried. But his plea fell on deaf ears.  
"No. That's not me. Not anymore. I paid my debt to Asgard. Many times over. If Odin failed to keep her under tight lock and key... That's the price of your inheritance, Golden Son." Her mouth contorted as if she wished to spit on the ground, but held back. "My condolences," her voice changed, softer now, realizing her audience was in various stages of mourning. "You're better off giving up Asgard and trying to make your stand elsewhere. She can't be challenged on her own soil."

"She is formidable. And I can understand your ire towards Odin," Loki started, seeking an opportunity to smooth things over, even temporarily, with his rival. "Right now, she is a far passing concern compared to Grandmaster, whose shadow we are still under." Thor nodded his head in agreement. "At least stay with us until we have all achieved a modicum of freedom from his reach. We are stronger together than apart."

"That's true," Korg piped up from the other side of the dead fire. He and Miek must have woken some minutes earlier. How much of the conversation had they heard? How much did they understand? "Until we get to wherever we're all going, we are stronger as a team than divided." A chrip from the ground next to him confirmed Miek's agreement.

The valkyrie huffed a long-suffering sigh.  
"Alright then, what does today hold? Hopefully finding a real meal and more than one bed?"  
"My thoughts exactly. We know we need to find another portal or a space-faring civilization to continue to grow our lead from Sakaar." Loki stood and stretched. Dawn was peering over the horizon. There was no hope of rest now. "And our best hope at that is to cover as much ground as possible. Bruce?" He held his hand down to the mortal, fidgeting under the scrutiny of so many, none of whom were human in the least. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose before grabbing Loki's hand and standing too. The dark god couldn't help the fond smile that colored his gaze.

"Yep, I agree. I've been on the run for the majority of my adult life. Distance is key, we need to keep moving. What're you thinking?" he asked Loki.  
"Well, I was actually thinking... that we need Hulk's help," he tried fitting a bashful grimace on his face to soften the blow.

Bruce's face fell. He had obviously not considered that strategy. And he was terrified at willingly succumbing to his green incubus.

"I promised Hulk, and I'll promise you, too." Loki trained his entire focus on the doctor, shutting out everyone else, even while acutely aware they were not alone. "Equal and fair. Hulk gets half the day and you the remainder. There's really no point in fighting it. The Hulk will hold onto consciousness by his fingernails if he feels he'll never come back up for air. As will you. _As would I_ , were I in your place." He pressed one palm flat against the doctor's chest, closing the distance between them and imbuing the motion with a measure of earnestness. Bruce's face was painted with anxiety and trepidation. Loki tried to fill his eyes with all the candor and frankness he could. 

"I trekked across the known universe for you, Bruce. I'm not about to let you be subsumed by him. I pulled you out from his control twice now. I know I can do it again." The mortal quailed under his gaze, wary to trust. Scared to believe. Wounded in ways Loki couldn't grasp or start to heal.  
"You promise?" His voice was as thin as glass.  
"It's in my best interest to keep you and he happy after all," he admitted. He threw a million watt smirk in Bruce's direction, trusting his charming visage to win over the waffling human. "Trust my selfishness, doctor."

Bruce looked like he wanted to scream. Or cry. Or run. But he did none of those things, instead taking Loki's words at their inherent value and closing his eyes, buckling under, his skin turning green without another word.

Loki would've liked another word. Anything. A glimpse into his eyes. A nod. A half-smile. A kiss. An embrace. Anything. Instead, in mere seconds he was facing the green titan grinning at the assembled group, reassured of Loki's fealty and the success of their initial flight.

****


	24. Chapter 24

Loki spent the better part of the day on the shoulders of the Hulk, actively casting about with his magic. Unafraid to take an aggressive stance now. Probing, to find a collection of magic or a conglomeration of life. One might mean a portal off this unnamed planet. The other could mean at least nourishment and rest, and perhaps a ticket on a rocket ship far away from here. He so badly wanted to find something, even a promise or a whisper of something. Something could mean distance from Sakaar and progress towards Asgard. 

The day ebbed away. Due to Loki's overconfidence and haste, they had found and discounted several false starts. An oddly precise stack of rocks. A whirlpool where strange fish circled and danced above the waves. A lava flow that seemed to move backwards into the earth rather than out of it.

Interesting, yes. But not what they needed.

After tiring hours in the air and on foot, Loki finally felt a twinge, a glimmer, of something. It was more than an echo, or false fire. He shouted above the wind as Hulk jumped through the air and the giant changed trajectory. They landed in the midst of short white buildings made of stone. Their facades were cracked and crumbling, but they were buildings regardless. The ground appeared to be paved with the same material, vivid green plants growing between the gaps, trying with slow patience to win back the landscape. The air was filled with the stench of growing and rotting plants, fecundity. There were no people anywhere here, nor even the whisper of people. But there had been once, clearly.

"Take me back up," Loki asked and the Hulk responded, jumping back into the air for a better view of the area. They were a mile or more above the landscape, but in any direction, it seemed to be the same buildings, in various stages of disrepair. Thoroughly abandoned. He and Hulk fell back to earth and sprang back upwards again, half a dozen times in all directions, but there was no evidence of motion or activity anywhere. A dead civilization? A planet, verdant with life, but entirely unpeopled? It was possible. They had covered significant ground that day. These ruins were the only promising site they'd found anywhere.

Hulk dropped back down, not needing Loki's direction to find what appeared to be the epicenter of development. The buildings here were also empty and vacant, but much grander than the ones they'd found minutes ago. They stretched overhead, not as imposing as the metropolises of Midgard, but impressive regardless. 

There wouldn't be sustenance in a dead city, but there might be shelter for the night. Loki could work with that. But was it more just than a temporary reprieve? He could feel winding power flowing through the desolate streets. Like floodwaters receding, draining into the earth, a salty high water mark to tell the story of a great torrent. Even if it was just a shadow of what it had once been, it was promising. He felt electric optimism as he slid from his perch on Hulk's shoulders and walked purposefully down the broad lane. Something was tugging him inexorably onwards.

"Fetch Thor and the others, would you?" he requested over his shoulder without turning around. "There's something there, I know it." Hulk grunted in agreement and a shockwave of wind hit Loki's back as the green dragon launched himself back into the troposphere to track down the remainder of their group of exiles.

Loki's feet continued to lead him down the empty promenade, buildings becoming taller, more ornamented. Statutes of no kind he was familiar with blossoming from the streets, their alien curves and angles covered with lichen and ivy. They were not humanoid, not quadrupedal. They hardly looked like living creatures at all. Perhaps that was simply due to their erosion over time. This city had been abandoned for eons. 

A hundred years? Two, three?

Finally the whisper of magic swelled to a melody. He was at the steps of a great building, as wide as it was tall. The peak was nearly double the height of all the others. What had it been? The palace? A cathedral? Temple? He ascended the numerous stairs and took a cursory look inside. 

It was a library or capitol, certainly. Myriad rooms and corridors ran inwards from the grand antechamber. Power swelled all around him in disparate directions and Loki's expectations of progress fell through the soles of his feet in disappointment. It would take years to search this mammoth building. The nexus of power still called out clearly, even after so many years of disuse. But it could be buried anywhere in this warren of rooms and corridors. 

To add insult to injury, he was the only sorcerer in their troop. Would the others be able to feel and search as he could? Maybe Thor would scent the waft of power innately, like an oddly perfumed air. And perhaps Bruce could as well, with that sharp brain of his and the proper equipment to detect its source. 

But 'perhaps' was not much of an assurance. Defeated, Loki turned to sit at the top of the grand stairs and await the others' arrival.

***

He had fallen asleep. Hulk was nudging his arm more gently than the trickster thought the beast capable, rousing him from slumber. Loki knew he was running thinly and, chiefly among all of them, needed some respite from this constant activity and earnest searching. But it wouldn't be now.

He roughly explained the situation to the team and they split into pairs to explore the great empire's mausoleum. Hulk insisted on accompanying the valkyrie, and Korg naturally went with Miek, leaving he and Odin's favorite son against his best protestations. The pairings utterly ruined their efficiency. But Hulk would not listen and Thor did not care. The bag of equipment Bruce had scoured from Samara's craft was left unused on the steps of the building.

Paired with Thor, the sorcerer chose a random direction, hoping that luck would smile on him, even if Fate had cast him aside. The blonde prince did try to keep their spirits up at first, but quickly began pestering Loki about his attachment to Bruce and his misadventures on Midgard following the Hulk's berserker rampage. Loki didn't have half a jot of patience for this, he _really_ didn't! 

He couldn't stand Thor even in his most amenable moods, and now he felt the grains of time and opportunity were slipping through his fingers like sand. And the mortal, _his_ mortal, was using this time to ingratiate his green self to the bounty hunter instead of rationally searching for the source of the pervasive power. This woman, this scrapper who had loudly proclaimed her intentions to part ways with their group as soon as she had a solid escape path under her feet. And where 'Angry Girl' went, the Hulk would undoubtedly follow.

He wouldn't let that happen. He couldn't. Hulk was too invested in her and his decisions automatically involved Bruce, with or without his consent. The other worry was the haunted look in Bruce's eyes. There were words on the doctor's lips, unsaid. What they were, Loki had not determined. It was a cancer eating at his mind. The fine balance between Hulk and Bruce that Loki had woven into a sound strategy for the doctor and the monster's benefit was ultimately a house of cards in front of Hulk's impulsive and possessive nature and Bruce's trepidation and insecurity. 

Loki knew it. It finally clicked into place. Where one entity got their way, the other would suffer. And vice versa. It was a fact of nature. How could two dichotomous beings ever hope for some sense of solace or equilibrium? There would always be one winner and one loser: zero sum. 

Loki was determined to not be the latter.

...Thor was _still_ talking? This was intolerable. He wasn't sure how long his enchantments would fool the increasingly clever warrior, but Loki had to try anyway. He spun up a clone which continued to follow the mindless oaf while he spirited himself away through a conjured door. He was quickly back in the great lobby of the building, and then off in the direction where he'd seen Hulk and the woman head.

He sprinted on soft soles through the empty decaying spaces, trying to trace the pair down. Even with his sharp ears and deft eyes, he couldn't spot them. Could he try reaching through the blood connection? However as soon as he thought to try, a jolt of external magic stopped Loki in his tracks. It bid him to change course, to pursue another corridor. The sorcerer moved cautiously ahead, senses alert to anything amiss. A deserted city would be the perfect place for an ambush. By whom? He didn't have a name for the phantoms that persecuted him in his imagination, but it didn't cost anything to be cautious.

He rounded the corner and the austere hallway opened into a bright and airy atrium. Spacious, too: at least a hundred strides square. Open to the blue skies not through deterioration, but by design. There were polished obelisks erected at the center in a circle. Gathered there too were Hulk and the valkyrie. 

They turned as one to him, sensing Loki's presence. Hulk wore a sullen frown, his open palms upturned towards her. The woman's face bore a look of anxiety and guilt. Had she been trying to split their team already?! The Hulk was a prize, and Loki had been a fool to think she wouldn't take her leave so soon, taking the green leviathan too. He approached, opening his silver-tongued mouth to question, but she cut him off.

"There's something here, I'm certain. I can't clearly tell, but it looks like an altar or a holy place of some sort." She pointedly didn't comment on whatever had passed between she and Hulk. "There's a pattern here, if you look closely," she stepped close to one of the pointed columns, fingertip pressing along markings in the surface.

"Yes, _please do_ touch the unnamed alien artifact. I'm certain no harm will follow," he sneered at her brazenness. But she was right. The marking wasn't a rune. And it wasn't writing. It was something else altogether. The All Speak stuttered and struggled in his mind. The best Loki could decipher was forms and quantities. One, nine, three, five...

"Prime numbers?" he questioned. She shrugged her shoulders, offering no guidance.   
"This one is entirely different." She skipped to another obelisk, ignoring Hulk who was unnaturally quiet and pointedly pouting.   
"Ratios," Loki answered. "A square circumscribed in a pentagon. A circle eclipsing... some polygon." Thor entered the room, in a fit of pique.  
"Your mischief fails to wear any fresh vestments, Loki. How long did you think you could fool me with that apparition?!"  
Loki ignored him, focusing on the strange designs instead. They grew more complex with each new column.

"It's mathematics." The idea was so crystal clear in his head, he could not be dissuaded. He crossed the room in three quick steps to approach Hulk. "Friend, as much as it pains me to admit it, we are outmatched here." He set one cool hand on Hulk's great forearm. "You found this place for us. Bravo. It is promising, no doubt. But there's magic here of a flavor I haven't encountered." He didn't want to admit it, but it was true. "It's as if the beings that peopled this place crafted their power like... on Midgard. On Earth. As a practicum. A science."

Hulk grunted, not entirely comprehending Loki's words, but anticipating his next ask all the same.  
"Loki want Banner." The dark god curtailed the sharp smile that threatened to spread over his features.  
"Correct. You're quick." A little extra flattery didn't hurt. "There's no one in this endeavor that we've depended on as much as you. Or as much as Banner. We need you for your brawn and deft. We need the doctor for his cunning and wit."

Hulk sat heavily upon the great white stone floor, dismayed and petulant.  
"Loki lie. No one need Hulk." His consuming apathy was unexpected, and it threw the dark god off his game. He hadn't seen the green beast like this before. "Only need Banner. Not fair, not equal. Hulk tired of this game." Before Loki could react, the great creature had shut his eyes and was already transforming back, shrinking into the stout doctor.

The sorcerer had what he wanted. He achieved his aim. So why did he feel guilty for it?

Bruce slowly returned to wakefulness and Loki cloaked him in his favorite purple shirt and khakis with half a thought. He procured Bruce's glasses, stored safe in his pocket dimension, and knelt down to gently place them on his face.

"Loki?"  
"We found something good," he unfurled the smirk at last, energy returning at his own words. "And we need one of your many PhDs to help make sense of it."

  
****


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the first time this story, and for most of this chapter, we see things from Bruce's POV.  
> Enjoy!

Bruce paced back and forth with a piece of charcoal in his hands, dusting his tanned skin black in the process. His sharp scribblings on the white marble floors were easy to read. It felt good, _right_ , being back in control of his body, but that small victory made it no less disconcerting to wake up in a new place, in a new building, with no memory of how he, or rather the Hulk, had gotten there.

The doctor had immediately investigated the ancient markings etched into the circle of pillars. It didn't take long before he agreed with Loki's assessment: it was a closer approximation to science than magic. Would the outcome be the same? They were all desperate to know, but Bruce's enthusiasm took on another shade. 

To be honest, his single-minded focus on the task before him was driven by several different desires. His own inherent need for knowledge and uncovering new truths. The promise of maybe being able to explain magic through objective scientific terms was tantalizing, too. It was also to give his brain something to muse on other than the various hard questions and conflicting emotions running through his mind non-stop. And... yes: to make himself as valuable as possible to the team. Bruce was only too aware of how the Hulk's gifts in alien lands that traded in violence and raw survival were valued above his own.

Yes, it was the doctor that knew what it took to be discrete and stealthy on the run. But that was on _Earth_. Here? Hulk was the linchpin in the team and everyone knew it. So if Bruce rejoiced at being in demand now, for once? He wasn't about to let his selfish guilt drown him, even if he was fully conscious of his own motivations.

His clarity of perception also extended to the dark god that stalked around the opposite side of the pillars, watching Bruce as he worked. The doctor knew Loki could be emotionally opaque at the best of times, but not now. His inner thoughts were written plainly across his pale face. It was clear the sorcerer was excited for the possibility of turning this disused ruin into a portal to speed their flight away from the frightening 'Grandmaster' creature. 

But he could tell Loki was also nervous about Bruce's potential success. Loki had studied for eons to master his magic. He clearly dreaded the potential of seeing his skills quantified, commoditized, reduced to a formula. It was like squeezing a majestic and complex symphony into an 8-bit ringtone. 

Layering on top and opposing that defensive impulse was the sorcerer's curiosity. From his limited frame of reference, it seemed that Loki was eager to understand Earth's science, not only to expand his knowledge but to compare it to his craft for purely egotistical reasons. Lord knew Loki had a colossal ego. Could humans ever comprehend those elemental concepts that he breathed as easily as air? Well, here was a brilliant opportunity for Bruce to try.

And then in a third, more personal way, Bruce could see Loki enjoyed watching the zeal that lit the doctor's own eyes and animated his hands purely by having a mystery to solve. Bruce wasn't unaware of his own charisma. Just dubious of the strength of its effect. 

When he and Tony were in the lab together, they fed off each other's creative energy. He could feel Loki doing the same now. While their ultimate mutual goal was progress, it was gratifying that sheer chance had put such an attractive challenge in front of both of them.

But the shadow of doubt crept into the purity of Bruce's happiness. Loki had lied to him about his son. Or rather, withheld the truth until it was demanded of him by those terrifying god-like creatures back on Earth. The Norns? Knowing that Loki knew the full truth and hadn't told him burned like the ragged wound from a butter knife. It was a great relief to be in control of his own physical body again and be holding the reins, and it warmed his heart in a manner and to a depth that no one had touched before to have the sorcerer _here_ , to have his undivided attention and adoration. But there was this sickly wound casting a pallor on his happiness. He tried to shake it, but it sat there, gnawing away all the same.

Bruce was also unsettled not knowing how much time had passed between Møysalen and Sakaar. How long had Hulk been in control? Loki and Thor couldn't know. Maybe the valkyrie Brunnhilde, Korg, or Miek knew? He'd had little chance to talk to them outside of the form of Hulk. Hulk knew certainly, but there was no passive sharing of knowledge between them. Just a pervasive jealousy of each second the other remained in control.

Bruce brought his mind back to the task at hand. The rest of their band of fugitives were scouring the city for durable goods that may have survived the ravages of time. The hole in Bruce's stomach was getting larger by the minute, and he couldn't imagine it was different for anyone else in their sorry troupe.

It was clear this city of the dead would be their home for at least another day, maybe longer. They all hoped for a quick outcome, but Thor, Brunnhilde, Korg, and Miek's efforts were better spent away from the temple while Bruce toiled over figures and Loki observed the fluctuations of the field of magic.

Bruce was glad for the easy camaraderie he'd found with the three new members of their entourage. Korg, for all his bulk, wasn't threatening in the least once you spoke to him. And Miek was sharp and funny despite the vast language and cultural barrier. Even the valkyrie was soft around the hard edges she kept up. She clearly didn't like Loki and was even wary of Thor. That much was apparent from her past on Asgard. But she'd taken a shine to Bruce in a wholly platonic way and he couldn't begrudge the honesty of her approach so far.

He was also glad to have Thor around: an ally, a friendly face, and more so, a brother in arms. He trusted him even as Loki threw barbs and landmines in his path. Bruce was well aware of their history from Loki's perspective. But it didn't diminish his own gladness for Thor's presence in this strange and terrifying adventure.

Ugh... Bruce was now distracted between trying to solve the runes and trying to straighten out his winding thoughts and watching Loki watch him. It was with significant strength that he tore his eyes back to the pillars and their strange carvings again and again.

There definitely was a pattern here. And like the shock of stepping under a waterfall, the tumblers suddenly clicked into place in the Bruce's mind.

"The Golden Record. That's what it's like. It's- it's a primer, a mathematical primer. Or rather," he gestured to the columns, "they represent progressions of numbers in increasing complexity." He pushed his glasses up his nose and circled the pillars, approaching the one next to Loki, who watched him sharply as he spoke. 

"This one, we both agree, is clearly zero. The representation of nothing." And it was: a column of nothingness. A base without a pillar, simply empty air. He pointed to the next one, smooth alabaster on all sides, marked with only a single groove. "This is clearly one: a representation of substance, but with finite quantity." Loki nodded his head but was nonplussed. They'd been over this before.

"And?" he prompted without inflection.  
"And this is negative one," Bruce smirked, pointing to another. Loki's mild irritation was mildly appealing. It spoke of a patience he wouldn't have been willing to grant Bruce earlier, when they were still enemies becoming acquaintances. Acquaintances dancing towards more. Now? Now everything had changed. Truthfully, he had crossed the _galaxy_ to find him. Oh god, just that thought alone brought the goosepimples to his arms. Besides that, Loki was willing to endure/allow/entertain Bruce's wayward musings and nonlinear speculations now. "There's just a shadow here," he continued his explanation, "like the light has been swallowed inwards. It's the inverse of the previous pillar."

Loki had _crossed the galaxy_ for him. What a concept. What a feat! It beggared belief, that someone, anyone, let alone the monarch of two worlds would seek _him_ out and save him from lifelong servitude. He pressed the nagging worries and burning wounds to the back of his mind to simply bask in the awe of this beautiful truth before him. 

God... how did he merit saving, in method of such magnitude? It was _staggering_. Bruce couldn't think about the enormity of their connection for more than a moment or two without feeling giddy, lightheaded. And in perilous danger of throwing away all his careful work and attacking the porcelain colonnade of Loki's neck with his unworthy lips.

Loki's sharp green eyes seemed to pick his unraveling thoughts apart. The sorcerer could see his dreams and memories, but he couldn't read his active thoughts. Could he?

Bruce's focus broke again and trailed to his dark hair, falling over broad shoulders in waves punctuated with silver streaks. Loki hadn't been graying before. It was a strange observation and threw Bruce's perception of time into the gutter. Perhaps Hulk had been steering their ship for more than mere months. Maybe years? Or god, for decades? There was no mirror for Bruce to gauge his own face by. How had he aged? He ran his fingers through his hair out of nervous habit, mussing it with charcoal powder.

Loki had an incredible lifespan by human measures. That was a fact. For his hair to silver like this either meant a substantial passage of time, or an unendurable amount of stress. Or some type of exotic disease? Or... potentially something else that Bruce couldn't wrap his tiny human mind around. A spell? A curse? He wanted to ask the demi-god, but the nagging question had an incredibly low priority compared to everything else they faced. His stomach protested with a timely growl but he chose to ignore it.

"And the next pillar?" Bruce continued, bringing his thoughts with effort back to the matter at hand. "I'm pretty sure it represents 'i'. That's the square root of negative one," he explained Earth terminology. "See the faint shimmer in the air where a pillar should be? If you look obliquely at it, a white column appears. But directly? There's just the outline, just a shadow. Like it doesn't exist. As if it lacks definition. Like it's... just imaginary." He swallowed thickly, moving onto the next pillar, feeling Loki's eyes boring into the back of his head. The hairs at the nape of his neck rose in response.

"H-here we dive deeper into the markings on the pillars themselves. These are ratios, or more specifically, the Golden Ratio: phi." He pointed to the next. "Circumference and diameter are marked on that one. Pi." He mentally ticked the next several pillars off his list, pointing as he went. "You were right about that one: a sequence of prime numbers. I haven't counted how high the pattern goes. But all these set the framework for deciphering the next." The glasses that had slipped down his nose were pushed up again without thought and he licked his lips and caught his breath running from concept to concept. 

"So then we have the pillar that represents 'e' and... I think that one is Planck's constant, but I'm not positive." Bruce chewed his lower lip between his teeth in thought. "The next contains the rough atomic masses for the first 5 elements in the periodic table. Again, like a primer. After that, there's another substance, much heavier." He continued to pull at his lower lip in thought. "Could it be the material these pillars are made of?" He was a man in motion then, skipping over to the last pillar, all energy and intuition. 

"And this one," he started, making the mistake of locking eyes with Loki who was all icy smolder and frozen motion as he watched the doctor describe his findings. Bruce steadied his own pulse with a shuddering gulp and tore his eyes back to the final pillar. "Th-this one is t-too much like Schwarzschild's radius applied to the mass of eight of the eleven pillars. Not zero, negative one, or i, of course. A-and assuming they are made of that mystery material. Then... that radius could be the event horizon for a very miniature black hole. The throat of a Schwarzschild tunnel? Or perhaps one end of an Einstein-Rosen bridge."

His words ended abruptly on that speculation and like a runner jumping from the starting block, Loki automatically stalked over to him, all silent motion and contained energy on an inexorable course. Bruce quailed under his steady approach.

"B-b-but I could be wrong on that..." He licked his lips anxiously, reaching to push his glasses up his nose again. Loki caught his hand in an iron grip, grinding his teeth together in frustration.  
"Stop. Doing. That," Loki growled low, barely audible. A shiver ran down Bruce's spine. He wasn't sure whether to be terrified or turned on. He settled for both. He swallowed stiffly and Loki's eyes darted down to his neck to watch the motion of his throat like the apex predator he consummately was.

"S-stop what?"  
"Really?" Loki deadpanned, eyes slit. "Don't pretend you don't know how distracting those little ticks of yours are. We're trying to open a portal, remember? If I see that tongue lick across your lips once more, I will have to..." Bruce, emboldened, defiant, stupidly, flicked his tongue over his teeth. Loki's words stuttered and failed on his lips.  
"Have to, what?" Bruce could feel his pulse hammering under his skin. This was a dangerous game to play, but a silver of his mind cried confidence in the outcome even as he was stared down by a glossy-eyed panther. He appeared to be deciding whether to rip off his clothes or rip out his throat.

Words formed and failed on Loki's tongue. Bruce could see the options pass like raindrops behind his eyes: an idea, a word, another. Then in short measure, he saw the moment they were all cast away, soundless, in favor of far sweeter action.

Loki grasped him by the meager bit of loose cloth in his tightly fitted purple shirt. The force pulled Bruce off balance, falling onto lips that devoured with a bottomless hunger. Loki had likened the doctor to a glass of water before? Bruce felt as though he was thoroughly drowning, unable to catch a breath. His hands fell onto the sorcerer's waist, gripping through far too much fabric to pull him close, closer. Trying to meld their bodies together.

This man, this king, who'd crossed the galaxy for him... And who knew what else he'd done that he wouldn't admit out loud. The passion and determination of the demi-god bled through his clenching fingers and pressing lips. Oh lord, it was too much. Bruce's knees grew weak as Loki abandoned his mouth for the tender skin of his neck.

"Jesus, Loki..." he felt a sliver of the demon's true strength as Bruce tried and failed to drag them down to the ground. No, instead Loki kept both men upright against the pull of muscles and gravity. He carded through the doctor's loose curls with one hand, supporting his whole quivering and limp body with the other.

It did bad, primal things to Bruce to be held so securely. To be desired so fervently. He'd never experienced this magnitude of unadulterated focus save within Loki's gaze. It was flattering and overwhelming. He didn't know what to do with the feelings writhing under his skin. But his body knew. All the blood rushed from his brain and his extremities to one point between his legs, boiling with lust, throbbing with blind need.

Loki lowered him calmly to the floor, his demeanor changed in a second, faster than Bruce could blink. The Asgardian stood once more, separating their bodies, but his eyes boring into Bruce's. None of his fire was diminished, only restrained. And barely that. Without daring to blink, he began to shed his own clothes, one elaborate garment at a time. Bruce couldn't help but chew anxiously at his own lips while he watched leather and textiles give way to bare skin. A ghost of rose flushed his flesh with heated anticipation. 

But as Bruce drank in the form that was slowly revealing itself to his long-neglected gaze, he saw the tattoos that covered Loki's skin. How _long_ had they two been separated? The question arose again. Those two glorious instances he'd seen so much of of the demi-god's flesh, they'd still been on Earth. The pond. His fortress. Oh, so long ago. Had it truly been years? His heart ached to think of it.

The markings were mesmerizing: some intricate patterns like twining vegetation, some mere dots and crosses in a fine pattern, but the majority were symbols resembling an ancient Nordic script. They decorated his skin in dark designs, a dense forest fighting for every spare patch of flesh. His tunic dropped to the floor and Loki was now bare to the waist. 

His trousers clung at the peaks of his hipbones and dipped flatly over pale skin and dark lines that disappeared even lower. Was his whole body tattooed? Bruce was eager to find out, but quailed at what it could mean. What an undertaking. Why had Loki marked himself so thoroughly?

"It's power." The trickster spoke solemnly, chin raised at an angle to bare his neck as though Bruce's gaze was at all obstructed. "Old spells from a myriad of disciplines, melded together despite their recalcitrance." Nude, Loki sank to his haunches. He began to slowly crawl towards Bruce on all fours, fulling becoming the predator he was at his core. The doctor didn't even bother to stifle a shudder of sheer fear and pleasure that shot through his body. Oh god, this man...

"I wonder. If these runes helped direct me to you subconsciously. Or if it was happenstance." The edges of Loki's lips curled benignly, still on hands and knees, crawling closer to Bruce's prone form. "No matter. The means pale in comparison to the ends." A broad smile now, sharp as steel, warm as the sun, stretched his pliable face in opposite directions. "And now I have you. To do with as I will. At my sole leisure."  
"Oh god, yes," Bruce breathed through the tightness in his chest, unable to assemble a more coherent answer. In the next blink, Loki wished all of the doctor's clothes away. He gasped at the coldness of the marble floor against his exposed thighs, but could not move or even think under the weight of Loki's penetrating gaze.

He continued his four-limbed approach, hips swaying, tongue peeking out to graze his sharp canines. There was no more talking, or at least Loki deigned not to speak. And Bruce had no capacity in his brain for things as silly as words anymore. 

The long-limbed beast crawled across the ground until he was sprawled across Bruce's body. He was naked but for his leather trousers and the doctor was entirely exposed. Without specifically intending to, he'd ceded control of the situation to Loki and was now laid bare for the demi-god to do as he willed. 

It began with an inspection of eyes and fingertips and tongue. They raced over his wildly heaving chest, electric rivers in their wake that left him gasping. Over his shoulders they explored as he propped his own torso upright. Then down his biceps, curling and tickling into the soft tender flesh opposite his elbow where his pulse fluttered dangerously. Slender fingers ran through his hair, mapping his curly locks and licking down his ears to his jugular, breath mingling as their lips met hungrily. He continued downwards, over collarbones, drawing wet trails down his sternum. They were both starving for each other's flesh.

It was invasive and intimate, and Bruce was rock hard already. Loki's fingertips danced again down his ribcage, settling on his hips and pulling the doctor towards himself across the floor, off balance. Bruce's elbows lost their purchase on the floor and he was now flat on his back on the cold stone. Loki pierced him with that burning gaze once more before moving lower, nuzzling at his flushed cock, showing him in the light of day exactly what he intended next. And he intended Bruce to watch.

"Oh _fuck_..." Bruce cried before Loki had even moved to wrap his lips around his throbbing head, sucking and licking. He spent his time only there until the doctor was mewling with need and shaking with pleasure. Only then did he start devouring him down, inch by impatient inch.

Bruce had imagined it in his mind so long ago, in the dark of his room in Stark Tower. Back then he'd had only his own insufficient hand and his brilliant mind to extrapolate the potential details. And then... last night had happened, pressed against a tree, seeing stars underneath his shut eyelids. He'd drowned under the attentions of the dark god's tongue. It was a divine moment. Nothing could have prepared him for the rush of pleasure then.

But as far departed as those two instances had been in content and satisfaction, so too was last night incomparable to the sight in front of him now. Loki, eyes shut, hair unkempt drifting over his face, jaw slack and wanton, swollen lips wrapped around his cock. _His_ cock. Oh _god_. It was buried from root to tip in Loki's mouth. 

Each pulse of his hammering heart could be felt against the wet velvet of Loki's mouth. It was... fucking hell! It was too much. He groaned out a gasp that was only 25% protest. He wanted to urge the demon on, but he also wanted oxygen in his lungs, gasping for breath, starved as his brain careened towards climax.

"Loki, oh my god..." he managed to stutter, but the sorcerer gave him no quarter. He paused momentarily, cock stuffed down his throat, to lock eyes with Bruce. A gaze heated with intent riveted the doctor to the spot, prevented him from breathing, short circuited his brain. Without breaking eye contact, Loki continued to suck and swallow him down. It was too much! Pleasure hit Bruce like an ocean wave, spine arching off the floor, eyes rolling back in his head, gasping for breath, as his seed spilled down the predator's throat. 

***

He must have blacked out for a moment. The next thing he knew, his toes were tingling and he was covered in soft dewdrops of sweat. The demon was lying alongside him on the stone floor, head propped on one elbow, collecting the beads of moisture along one finger that was trailing lazily over his ribcage.

" _Holy fuck_ ," Bruce breathed. Had he ever come so hard in his life? His brain wasn't up to the task and the question fizzled out in his mind. Loki lifted his finger, contemplating the sweat ghosting over his skin. He sucked it into his mouth thoughtfully before glancing at Bruce and pronouncing:  
"Satisfactory."

The doctor couldn't help but giggle at his mock-serious face. The afterglow was slowly pulling him back to reality. But not too soon.   
"Satisfactory?" he smirked, tone flat.  
"Mmm. You've taken the sharpest edge off my thirst. But only _just_. I haven't drunk my fill. Not by a long measure, dear Bruce." The casual affected glance had been cast off for the return of the piercing gaze of the panther.

"Oh my god, Loki. Have pity. I'm only human, remember?" he chuckled.  
"Yes. Pity." He contemplated the edge of Bruce's ribcage where his breath was falling in short inhalations under close inspection. And where his eyes fell, his fingers followed. The chill digits were creeping languidly over the lines of his chest, down across planes of stomach, swirling fine hairs, dancing over his navel, dipping lower but mercifully not torturing Bruce's exhausted flaccid member.

"It seems I shall have to content myself with other pleasures while you recoup your strength," he teased gently.   
"Mmmm," Bruce agreed wordlessly. He wasn't 25 anymore, after all. "How do you intend to do that?" The blinding smirk that blossomed on Loki's face at his question would have made weaker men quail and blanch.  
"I would normally describe it to you in excruciating detail," Loki murmured, bringing his face to the soft skin of Bruce's sternum. "But I'll use this opportunity to demonstrate instead."

***

Loki propped himself up on his palms, bracing the mortal man below him. Bruce was still in a daze of... what did the humans call it? Dopamine? His gaze was slightly glassy and he was so pliable. Unresistant. Willing.

Oh, as if the good doctor could ever be anything less than submissive and enthusiastically consenting once Loki had him pinned down, prone. It would be worthwhile to explore the limits of what Bruce would let him do. But later, not now. Now he was desperate for cool, fresh water and would not snub it and demand ambrosia.

No, now he simply wanted to feel. To shake off his calm collection and drink heavily from the willing body beneath him. To _be_. Just that. That in itself was a gift too precious to comprehend. He dipped his head and kissed down Bruce's dewy flesh, softly, reverently. There was passion and need boiling under his skin but he was still in control. He would enjoy this, one moment at a time. 

He migrated to Bruce's hip bones and continued to press his pursed lips to the crests where his fragile bones touched the surface. Oh, he was breakable like this. So human. The Hulk's skin could barely be pierced, but he was mortal too. But now, like this, Bruce was purely mortal and human. A willing sacrifice stretched over the metaphorical altar of Loki's temple. Perfect. 

There were other thoughts tied up within that one, but Loki shook them off. Now wasn't the time to contemplate his failings and frailty. It was time to play and tease and claim and _own_.

He bit down on the delicate skin spaced between the doctor's hips and his groin and Bruce cried out in shock tinged with pain. Perfect, yes. It wasn't hard enough to break the skin, just enough to electrify his human and keep his focus where it ought to be: on Loki.

Indeed, his spent cock gave a half-twitch in response, eager to engage but as yet unable. Once this ordeal was over, it would be worthwhile to study magical means of fortifying mortal men... He'd never had a reason to investigate that end before but he could see the clear advantages now.

Even if portions of Bruce were as yet unable to participate, he was breathing in short gasps and his pupils were blown wide with lust. Loki continued down his thighs, kissing and licking. He nudged them apart and settled between Bruce's legs.

Oh, he liked that, didn't he? Anticipation brought the doctor's bottom lip between his teeth and he moaned hesitantly. It was a lovely sound. Loki sucked two of his fingers into his own mouth, coating them with saliva copiously. He intended to do this the traditional way. A little magic, yes, but he couldn't really spare much given their uncertain position. A dead world, no route home, no shelter or food to speak of. But that wasn't his primary motivation. There was something raw, wrong, forbidden, animalistic, about using only the natural lubricant of his own body to smooth his way. With nothing else between him and his quarry. Just the two of them, all molecules and nerve endings and the simple purity of nature.

Beneath him, Bruce drew one knee up wantonly. _Oh Idunn_ , it was perfect. The invitation was too good to ignore and Loki granted him a broad grin, all teeth and anticipation. The doctor moaned again and closed his eyes against the sensory onslaught.

"What did I tell you last time?" Loki prompted gently.  
"Huh?" he was gone, obliviated.  
"Last time. Bruce, don't be petulant." Oh, he was anything but. However it was delightful to harass him now. By Bor, he loved tormenting this precious soul. "Eyes open. And _keep_ them open." The doctor whimpered pitifully, realizing exactly what the demi-god was asking. But he obeyed regardless.

His brown eyes opened and locked on Loki. So the sorcerer seized the opportunity and slid one wet finger into Bruce's tight hole.  
"Fuck!" he breathed and suddenly every inch of his mortal body stood at vigorous attention. Maybe this subject wouldn't need diligent study after all. Perhaps practical experimentation on the vitality of Midgardian men was the best course of action.

Loki's attentions certainly seemed to be paying off now. He worked his sole finger in and out of Bruce's body, watching him quiver and gasp and his broad cock swell with renewed desire. Slowly, he added another finger until the doctor was breathing raggedly and closing his eyes against the burden of simply feeling.

"Open your eyes, my love," he murmured. Bruce obeyed and Loki continued, "so that you can watch me _utterly_ ravage you."  
"Oh god-," he gasped and Loki wasted no time in hooking one of Bruce's pliant legs over his shoulder. He slid smoothly into his warm waiting body while the scientist could only clench his teeth and grasp at his own hair. There were no bedsheets to crumple, no edge to grip, nothing to dilute the spike of pleasure but the uncaring stone floor and Loki's body driving fervently into his quick mortal heat.

Oh Valhalla! It should weep at the comparison with this exquisite moment. Bruce was trembling and fighting to keep his eyes open and locked on Loki's as he thrust in again and again, deeper and deeper, striving toward some center, some perfection, when in actuality he was already there. _Bruce_. Dear, dear Bruce. It was better than a dream. Better than his wildest desires. Better than his fragile smothered longing. He was buried in the other man's body now, but it felt like his very core was already melted and swimming in the doctor's blood.

It wasn't a feeling he could name or a concept he could define. It was just bliss and warmth and the feeling that for the first time in his agonizingly long life, he was _right_. Bruce shuddered around him, overwhelmed in bliss. He spilled over his own skin, painting the alabaster floor with the product of their lovemaking. Nothing could take this incandescent moment away from the demi-god. Loki reached down, one hand on Bruce's thigh, guiding his ardent, repetitive devotion. The other hand grasped for Bruce's neck. Gripping, but not tightly. Claiming, but not controlling. 

Perfect. Words at last escaped his silver tongue. He dragged his fingernails lightly over Bruce's exposed throat and came until he was screaming in pleasure.

****


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We return to Bruce's POV.

  
The remainder of the day was a series of moments that blended together in one continuous recollection of pleasure. Loki had claimed his body again. And again. So many times he'd lost count, though not for lack of trying.

Absently, Bruce worried that part of his brain had melted under too many endorphins. He had lost the ability to speak, communicating only in guttural sighs, whispered groans, and strangled whimpers. He was no longer Doctor Bruce Banner, PhD. He was a nameless conglomerate of muscles that had been turned to mush and saturated nerve endings burnt beyond recognition.

He came back to awareness in dropping bits. He and Loki were still naked on the floor, but the patches where their bare limbs mingled was warm and pleasant. Bruce never wanted to move again.

But somewhere, somehow, a piece of his inquisitive brain survived. Miracle of miracles. He drew lines without meaning across Loki's tattooed skin. The demi-god was still asleep. Bruce had never been able to observe him, unobstructed, in this vulnerable state. It was nothing short of entrancing. 

The Asgardian even slept with an air of entitlement and nobility. There was absolutely no snoring from his lips. No errant mumbled words. Perish the thought! There was simply steady soft breathing through his elegant nostrils. Bruce smiled fondly. 

But now that he had an opportunity to inspect the self-imposed markings on Loki's skin up close, Bruce could tell they were not homogeneous in quality or skill. Most were beautiful fine lines drawn with focus and intent. But others were ragged, drawn and re-drawn with a shaky hand. From effort? From pain or toil? From the sheer need to cut through the monotony of stifling his true nature? It was a sad thought and a reminder that he would have to redouble his efforts to get Loki to open up about his hated, other self. Who better than Bruce to empathize, after all?

Yes, there was a toll evident in maybe ten percent of the inked designs. It wasn't apparent from afar and didn't mar the image of crafted perfection over his skin. But on close inspection, under the sympathetic gaze of a lover, it was plain that Loki had bled and sacrificed for the markings that covered his body. Bruce traced these designs attentively, storing this silent moment of perfection for later inspection.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a long moment. Faint sounds of the returning group emanated from afar, spilling down the corridor to the open atrium where he and Loki lay. As his higher faculties were still corroded from earlier, the realization didn't hit him for the span of several precious seconds. He and Loki were still stark naked, curled into each other. 

Now was a probably a good time to panic.

Bruce was fully awake in half an eye-blink and poking the demi-god in the ribs harder than his logical brain would have deemed appropriate if not for their impending discovery and the haze of spent pleasure that still smothered it.

"Loki!" he hissed, and the demon opened his eyes lazily. He glanced at Bruce, then in the direction of Thor's voice, and made a vague gesture in the air that appeared to cloak their bare bodies in some sort of magic. Then the sorcerer simply closed his eyes and continued to rest.

But Bruce's heartbeat would not slow. It appeared to all the world as though they were mere moments away from humiliation and several difficult conversations he was not ready to have with his fellow Avenger and the others. What was the magic Loki had cast? Could they see them? Would they be discovered? 

There wasn't time to fret. Brunnhilde entered the atrium first, followed by Korg, Miek, and then Thor. The troupe glanced around, eyes roving but settling nowhere precise. Certainly not on the naked tangle of Bruce and Loki. It was probably safe then to reason they and the utter mess of bodily fluids they'd made in the center of the circle of obelisks was invisible. However it didn't stop his racing pulse or his shallow gasps for breath. He tore his eyes from the group and glanced down at Loki. One green eye was cracked open and the shadow of a smirk graced his seemingly sleeping lips. 

He was awake! And enjoying Bruce's panic! That bastard! He wanted to throttle Loki, but he didn't dare move and tear down the tenuous veil of magic they were apparently hidden behind.

  
***

  
For his part, Loki was enjoying himself. Sated, soaking in Bruce's body heat, sleepy and listless, and entertained by the chaos he'd created on both sides of the web of invisibility he'd woven. 

The ravenous carnal thirst had ebbed by measures during the pleasant hours in which he'd demanded the doctor's _full_ attention. It wasn't gone, but it was satisfied by magnitudes. This? This was just a tease, a harmless trick. The sugared fruit on top of his proverbial whipped dessert.

He wanted to chuckle out loud at the murderous looks Bruce was serving him and at the bewildered group that approached. Thor was calling out his name now and musing whether he had absconded with Dr Banner once and for all. Oh, it was delightful to actually be in control of a situation. To hold all the cards, even if they were of little weight.

Bruce was now trying to mouth silent words at him, threats and demands and the adorable blush spreading across his face was spreading to his neck, his bare chest. Their clothes were nowhere to be found. Only the doctor's glasses had been spared the reckless abandon of their earlier passion. 

Loki at last relented, spotting a sack full of berries carried by Korg and a string of half a dozen lizards, rats, and other creatures that Thor bore over his back. Food of a meager nature, but sustenance regardless. He sorely needed the energy and swiftly magicked away the stains covering the floor, cladding himself and Bruce in perfunctory Midgardian garb. He stood, shaking his hair out until it fell in undisturbed waves over his shoulders and offered a hand to Bruce who also stood. The doctor was still silent, one eyebrow arched in a manufactured expression that desperately wanted to be unimpressed and petulant but which Loki knew was framed by gentle affection towards the god of lies. Loki pressed a soft kiss to the doctor's lips and then turned to Thor, dropping their invisible shroud.

"Ah, a feast! The conquerors return. Shall I make a fire?" He pointed at a spot on the marble surface some yards away and a conjured campfire lit the slowly darkening room.  
"Loki!" Thor tried to hide his relief under irritation, but subtlety was not his forte. "You're in an uncharacteristically good mood," he accused.  
"With the return of our valiant crew, laden by culinary treats? And the good doctor and I having made such progress on deciphering the magic here?" A broad grin split his face. "Why _yes_ , I am in a good mood." Korg lifted the dead animals from Thor's hands and got to work preparing to roast them over the fire. He clearly didn't trust the Asgardian heir to do more than banter with his brother. Hunger and productivity won out.

"Progress?" Thor lifted his chin in suspicion but said nothing more. "That's excellent. Care to elaborate?" Bruce piped up then, hands stuffed in his soft grey pullover anxiously, trying to make himself as small as possible unconsciously.  
"We figured out the pattern. It's a recipe to create a singularity from the content of the pillars themselves. Or maybe not the pillars directly, but a quantity of matter the same mass and composition." He paused then, looking Loki in the eye with a glance that said he'd caught on to another of his jokes.

Oh Bruce, clever Bruce. Loki had decked them in fresh clothing on purpose. Not only was he tiring of his Asgardian armor, but it was a silent signal that he and Bruce had busied themselves with more than just deciphering the pillars. A satisfied smirk settled itself in the corner of Loki's mouth as he picked up the conversation.

"Correct. The difficulty now, unless my frighteningly intelligent companion has a ready method, will be to transmute the pillars into the 'black hole' they describe." Bruce scratched the back of his head in thought.   
"Me? Uh, not yet. We haven't got even a screwdriver on hand, much less a particle accelerator." He stared at Loki and deliberately over-licked his lips in thought. "Unless my frighteningly jovial companion has one stashed up his sleeve?"

"Oh Norns, you two," the valkyrie called out from where she squatted by the fire, rolling her eyes. "Can you make it a _little more_ obvious? I don't think we've all caught on yet to your implied activities this afternoon." Her voice was dripping with sarcasm, but it was a shade of fond, not bitter. Even Korg was smiling and perhaps Miek was too? The weird camaraderie was at last pierced by the aroma of charring flesh and Thor's stomach growled on cue.  
"Food first. Strategy after."

****


	27. Chapter 27

Night had fallen with staggering speed and the vast chamber was lit only by the smokeless campfire and by the faint eerie glow of the pillar representing the number i. Long stark shadows drew themselves across the polished floor.

There had been precious little progress following their meager meal. Bruce looked ready to pull out his hair in handfuls. The valkyrie, Brunnhilde he realized her name was now, was picking her teeth with a dagger in listless irritation. When Loki found out her true name he was hit with a modicum of hero-worship. She wasn't just a valkyrie, she was The Valkyrie, a true legend. No wonder she had survived Hela.

Thor was stalking around the pillars, inspecting each carefully as if he could compel the answer to bleed through the stone by the force of his stare. Korg and Miek sat silently by the fire, being as small and unobtrusive as they could. Loki was ready to beat something into submission, if only there was a suitable target for his wrath.

"Searching for another location in this realm with as much potential as this one is a fool's errand," he spat, picking the argument up anew. "Look around you, Thor. This was their capital. Their most important building. If there was another civilization, Hulk and I would have found it."  
"I agree, I do," Bruce interjected. "But how do we create something out of nothing? This is another end of the universe yes, but conservation of mass is an inescapable law." The doctor held up his empty hands in supplication to uncaring fate. "I don't have the tools or a power source. Hell, I don't even have a calculator. The equipment I salvaged from the ship after we crashed doesn't help here. All I really have is a piece of charcoal, and even half of _that_ is gone." He looked like he wanted to throw the stylus across the room in anger, but he held his temper. As he always did.

"So all that magic, Loki... All the _studying_ you did, decades, centuries... There's _nothing_ we can do to create what Banner needs?" Thor laughed, but it was a bitter sound. "It's a good thing you've focused so sharply on conjuring tricks and mischief instead. Your skills are ever so helpful and productive."  
"I am as bereft of implements as Banner, _you oaf_. If you think I can conjure a stable portal through space from nothing more than alien scrawl and the faint hint of power in the air, then I am _truly_ flattered."

The sharp banter, approaching outright fighting, continued to crescendo. They were all frustrated: the guidebook was laid out in front of them without any practical way to apply its instructions. Were they doomed to eat fried reptiles and rodents until Grandmaster's armies inevitably found their way through the oasis portal on Sakaar and strung them up? Loki was speared by a sudden kinship to the pitiable creatures they'd just consumed.

No. The demi-god would go down fighting, that much was certain. He wasn't a helpless lizard. Even if it meant scratching and biting with his sharp teeth and nails and-

What was Miek doing?

The small purple alien was ambling towards the pillars. Loki stopped spewing vitriol to watch his curious, determined progression. Thor and Bruce were still near-shouting at each other but the sound faded out in his awareness. Miek brought his hands over his head as if he was stretching, squeezing nothing but air between his phalanges. It was clear he was concentrating but Loki couldn't quantify his focus or his strange aim until he heard a soft crack emanate from the closest pillar.

"Sssh," he called forcefully behind him to Bruce and Thor, still bickering. The pillar seemed to shrink in size, or maybe that was just Loki's wishful thinking. He stared, eyes fixed sharply, willing something to happen. His patience and Miek's odd efforts began to bear fruit. The pillar trembled on its base before collapsing inwards in an unnatural implosion. Miek gasped, a trembling breath, and brought his arms back to his sides, relaxing from the apparent effort. A small white sphere was left on the ground in the place where the first pillar had stood. It was as round and featureless and perfect as a drop of blood floating in space.

Loki approached it tentatively. The sound in the vast room had utterly died and all attentions were now focused on what Miek had unexpectedly wrought. The demi-god crouched and stuck one finger out, nudging the small sphere cautiously. It was cold as ice, no bigger than a fruit pit, and it refused to move no matter how hard he pressed on it. He bore down with his magic, attempting to lift or shake it, but sweat beaded on his forehead from exertion without success. The sphere may have been Mjolnir for all he was able to make it respond to his commands.

Bruce seemed to come to the same realization at the same moment.  
"Holy shit." He turned to Miek. "I didn't know you could do that?" And then to Korg. "Did you know he could do that?"  
"Of course. Not sure why you're all surprised. Miek is telepathic, didn't you know?" he shrugged casually, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.  
"This is not telepathy," Loki tried to control his voice but it was colored with a tinge of accusation.  
"No? Well I don't know what it's called." Korg chuckled good-naturedly. "Didn't you wonder how such a small guy lasted so long in the contest of champions? It wasn't just those blades. Grandmaster would put him out for a shock and a giggle from the crowd," he recalled fondly. "He's a terrifying little guy when he uses that on his opponents. Glad you're on our side, mate!" Miek waddled back over to the rock creature and settled down on the floor with what appeared to be a pleased shudder.

Loki was speechless. Bruce was in motion now, moving to inspect the small sphere that was all that was left of the pillar.  
"Uh, this is just total speculation, but I'm going to say it anyway. It's what we're all thinking..." He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "If this is the same mass as before, the density of the stone has been increased by exponential factors. If the electron cloud-" He pivoted, turning back to Miek. "Could you make this smaller still?" Miek chirped, energy slightly recovered, and ambled back to where the pillar had stood. 

Again, he spread his short arms wide, focusing and curling them around in a show of great mental effort. Loki and Bruce stared at the sphere, unblinking. And then suddenly, it was gone. They stared at each other before Bruce dropped to the floor, peering closely at the spot the sphere had been.  
"Good lord," he breathed. "It's still there! Among the bits of dust. It's so tiny I can barely see it. The nuclei might even be touching now. This is _wild_." 

The scientist jumped to his feet, clapping Miek on the back in exuberance even as his mind sped ahead.   
"But... why isn't it falling through the floor? It should be burrowing towards the center of the planet with all that mass. Unless this isn't a planet? Or maybe the positive charge of this material is strong enough to repel the condensed atomic weight? Or... This is crazy!" He was a bubble of elated energy.  
"It's magic," Loki tried, somberly. "Wouldn't that be a more efficient explanation?"

"No, that's glossing over the details," Bruce insisted. His brows knit in consternation, but he eventually conceded. "I can't explain how Miek accomplished that. Not in a million years. I think I _can_ explain the stability of the sphere, but that's not our biggest issue."  
"What is?" interjected Thor, skeptical of how substantially their luck had improved.  
"If we can't move _this_ ," he pointed at the nigh insubstantial sphere on the ground, "then we probably can't move the other pillars either. How do we merge them? The markings indicate that the mass of _all_ of them is needed to create a stable singularity."

That was a problem. Thor tried pushing on one pillar. Brunnhilde joined in. Loki twined his magic with their might, but the pillar barely moved.

The next day was spent hacking the pillars into smaller pieces. The bricks were still enormously heavy, but could at least be handled and moved. Brunnhilde and Thor used their weaponry, Korg his brute strength, and Loki his magic to break down the seven monoliths remaining. Miek was left to lounge and regain his strength and mental fortitude. Bruce was loathe to give control over to the Hulk, but in the end he divided his time with his green incubus as Loki bid him. The doctor assisted in carving the pillars with Samara's blaster. Then Hulk was tasked with picking up the rubble and piling them as best as possible on top of the minuscule sphere.

It wasn't one day's work. Their toil lasted the better part of a week, until impatience banked and tempers flared. Loki swore if he had to eat berries and lizard corpses for one more day... No, he couldn't bring himself to finish the internally-directed threat. There was nothing else but this drudgery. There was only one way forward or impossibly back into the jaws of an enraged Grandmaster. He was certain he had seen only a fraction of his frightening potential.

***

At last, they had settled all of the material of the pillars in one central location. Miek had dutifully shrunk the stone down at the end of each day so that the pile remained manageable and grew increasingly concentrated. The immense quantity of the eight obelisks was now approximately the size of an apple. But it needed to be smaller for their purposes. Much smaller. Impossibly small and dense.

"All right, Miek." Loki settled one hand on the small creature's back, slowly feeding power from his core into the creature's tiny body. They would do this together. The creature chittered in agreement and began to focus. It was the same as before, the small being focusing his strange mental abilities onto the condensed rock, but the air seemed to tingle with anticipation and exertion for this last, necessary step. The spherical stone progressively shrank from a fruit to a marble and then to a grain of rice. Loki could feel Miek begin to shake and sweat from the effort. This was a brand of magic he'd never seen before and it was amazing and frightening simultaneously.

Everyone was dead silent as Miek worked but progress seemed to stutter out. The grain of rock was still there. And it needed to be smaller still. So small it would shrink into insignificance. 

As the slight creature took a gasping breath and appeared to renew his struggle, Loki was struck by sudden inspiration. Objects expanded in heat and shrank in the cold. Perhaps a dose of shocking frigidity was needed to push their efforts over the finish line.

Internally, he pretended and told himself it wasn't a humiliation. He lied to himself and repeated it. It didn't matter. It wasn't a big deal. This wasn't the first time Bruce would see his Jotun form firsthand. No, it was just routine. Inconsequential. But it was the only way this would work.

And because he was the Liesmith, he almost believed himself.

Loki closed his eyes and numbed the blood connection between himself and Bruce. He couldn't have the mortal's inevitable shock and revulsion at seeing his monstrous form in the flesh distract him from his efforts. He knew he couldn't stop Bruce from connecting with his experience, but at least he could provide himself a measure of mercy. It might break him otherwise.

No time for hesitation, the sorcerer wordlessly shed his Asgardian features like dripping candle wax. He removed his hands from Miek's shoulders and extended his rough blue palms in front of the mote of rock. Loki reached into his core again, desperate for a result, deliberately refusing to save any energy for future endeavors. It was this or nothing, he was certain. Success now or failure forever. There was nothing to lose, nothing to hold back.

The cold spread from his feet and his hands, frosting the rock, crystallizing the air. Beside him, Miek was recharged by Loki's support and renewed his own efforts. The two magicians focused their innate abilities on the flake of stone with such conviction that Loki swore he could feel the composition of his own body changing. He transformed from something approaching warm and vital into an inert and frozen sculpture. He was no longer alive, he was a glacier left in place, courted by millennia, timeless and powerful and indifferent.

The ghost of sweat from his exertion would have beaded on Loki's forehead, except there was no liquid moisture left in his body. He was an icicle on the frozen landscape of eternity. 

And it was working. 

Slowly, the grain faded from sight. But it was still there. Loki could inherently feel the massive weight of the molecule as he and Miek shrunk it down, further and further. Pulling any remaining heat out of the strange matter and pushing and hammering it smaller and smaller.

There was no visible sign of their victory. Rather, he and Miek felt it through their extended arms simultaneously. The moment when the gargantuan amount of matter they'd shrunk simply ceased to exist. It was no longer part of this reality. The dot of mass inhabited the atrium's space and yet it stood apart entirely, exotic and unique. 

Loki gasped, realizing he was still a living being, not a statue married to the frigid void. He fell to his knees and was distantly aware of Miek collapsing next to him. It was black on the edges of his vision for an indeterminate amount of time until sounds and images and motion finally filtered back into his consciousness.

"Loki? Welcome back." Bruce smiled serenely at him, crouched next to the demi-god's fallen figure in the waning light of day. The atrium was all muted grays and golds as the sun faded from the sky. His skin was once again Asgardian.

Both were excellent signs. Bruce hadn't immediately run screaming at the sight of his Jotun blue in the flesh. It was one thing to view his disfigured form through the merciful lens of memory, but face to face was another. This was hopeful progress.

However, the connection on Loki's side was still numbed and he couldn't feel Bruce innately. He didn't know if he wanted to open the connection yet or not. Would there be a ghost of disgust in Bruce's mind? The doctor was the demi-god's primary motivation now, his focus, his lodestone. If he... 

No, Loki wouldn't entertain the notion of rejection. He wouldn't let his mind race ahead to effect of affection potentially reserved, withheld. Would a cloud form in Bruce's eyes if this jotun runt tried to touch him? His monstrous skin was, after all, merely cloaked under a pleasing facade.

No, now was not the time to dwell on it, or bask in self-pity. He kept the connection safely down.

"Did we do it?" Loki whispered, already aware of the answer.  
"Yeah, I think so. After you and Miek seemed stable, I..." he looked down, sheepish but elated. "I couldn't help but experiment. I tossed a pebble at the spot where the stone had been. Poof!" The doctor's eyes grew wide with excitement. "It, just, it disappeared. So I tried again. Same thing. Anything I throw at that spot just... blinks out." The smile on the Bruce's face was a mile wide and the brilliant energy fed Loki's depleted and pitiable core, warming and bringing him closer to something approaching normality.

"Fantastic. Then we haven't far to go." He made to stand but his legs stuttered, not quite ready to obey his commands. Bruce quickly pulled his arm over one shoulder, wrapping his other around Loki's torso. 

So. He wasn't disgusted by the idea of touching Loki informally. That was a good sign. But the sorcerer wouldn't rejoice just yet.

Together, he and Banner made quite a pair. With the doctor's help, he was able to stand shakily. He approached the empty area where, to the untrained and unaware eye, there was nothing out of sorts. But Loki's skin began to tingle as he approached the power they'd created.

"Do you feel it?" Thor spoke up. "Whenever I go near there, my fingers start to spark uncontrollably." Loki nodded in solemn acknowledgement, but remained silent. If even the thunderer could feel it, they had created something with undeniable power. A tear in the fabric of reality. Uncurated, raw. Wondrous. Now it only needed to be developed to its full potential and they'd have the portal they sought.

This was an easy feat in comparison. Loki stepped away from Bruce unsteadily and picked up the last bit of discarded charcoal. He walked around the mote of power, drawing glyphs on the alabaster floor. The runes were etched into his memory: the same he'd used in the desert of Sakaar, the same that called down the Bifrost. It was a work of art, and lovingly done. The edges of the figures were sharp and precise. There could be no room for casual construction. It had to be, and should be, perfect.

The room was silent as he worked. Loki stood, satisfied at the complex design drawn at the circumference of safety. He conjured a blade and sliced open his palm. The demi-god was still drained and opted to open his end of the connection between he and Bruce to let energy from the Midgardian doctor's warm vital form sluice into his veins. He sorely needed the power after his efforts and would shelve any discomfort to the back of his mind for now and process it later.

But there was none? The pure warmth that flooded through... No, the pride, the surety, the optimism, all bolstered Loki forward. It was a glass of cool water, reinvigorating him. There was only acceptance and awe he could feel right now, no rejection. 

His palm pooled dark with blood and he wrung it out onto the glpyhs at precise intervals. Magic sparked through the air and fed into the singularity, warping and preparing it. 

Loki closed his eyes, reaching his fingers in the air, not connecting with anything but instead letting his corporeal body guide the way through the pages of old tomes stored in his mind. Through the tattoos carved on his body. The next step in the method was there, it just needed to be remembered and performed. He pulled at the minuscule edges of the tear in reality and began to pull. It kept slipping from his astral grip, but after a few failed tries, he found purchase. The gap slowly peeled apart, becoming impossibly smooth and thin. A one-dimensional point squeezed and rolled into a disc, painted with a mirror-sheen, growing in apparent size.

Loki finally opened his eyes to regard his work and found the image conjured behind his eyelids was the same as the silver saucer which floated benignly in the space before him, encircled by the darkly glowing runes. He cocked his head from side to side, regarding the non-object. The face it showed him remained the same, an argent plate of shimmering nothingness which seemed to follow his gaze. It was perfect. Or as perfect as he could hope for in this desert of proper tools and resources.

"Tada," he turned around theatrically, arms extended, taking a shallow stage bow on his and Miek's behalf. The purple creature was some distance away, simply recovering, but Loki could tell an insectoid version of a smile broke over its pleased visage.

The remainder of the group was simply gobsmacked. Thor grinned broadly, approaching Loki as if to slap him on the back in congratulations, but stopped himself short awkwardly, sensing the sorcerer's utter exhaustion.  
"Excellent work, brother." His smile, though restrained, was still genuine. Even Brunnhilde seemed pleased, a sly smile on her face and a nod of recognition. Korg grinned from where he crouched by Miek, a question on his tongue but holding it for now.

Bruce was... staring at him with veiled eyes, trying desperately to smile and hide his unease. It was a futile effort. In confusion, Loki looked down at his own hands. He had reverted again to his Jotun form! It was entirely unbidden. By Ymir! Why could he _not_ control this? No wonder at the doctor's stunned reaction. 

Loki wanted to smile and reassure him, but kept his lips closed, the monstrous teeth that filled his mouth wisely hidden. So, the warmth he'd felt from the doctor earlier had been only due to the presence of his Asgardian frame? Or was it an elaborate construction to bolster Loki's chance of success? A beautiful lie that the Liesmith had bought wholesale.

"Brilliant, Loki. Just brilliant." The demi-god could see the action now, quite clearly, when Bruce stuffed down his natural revulsion and cloaked himself in professional detachment. It was a sharp slap in the face. A brand-new rejection where Loki had only seen unconditional acceptance before. 

He'd allowed himself to feel, to hope. He'd allowed himself to become vulnerable. Fool!

Loki acutely felt the moment when his cold dead heart cleft in two.

No.

Loki stuffed it down further. He wouldn't allow the drops that collected in his eyes to fall. No. He refused to linger on the rejection that sliced like a dagger through his ribcage. He couldn't. He'd seen it before and he would see it again. And again. Long after the mortal had perished and Loki was still alive, alone. It was his fate. The cup of hatred in his chest grew full. Loki swallowed stiffly around the lump in his throat. He would process it later, not now. Not on the eve of their success.

The scientist, unaware of the war frothing under Loki's skin, approached the portal. Bruce gazed at the silver surface intently and looked for all the world like he wanted to push his fingers through, test it directly. But he refrained. He was simply absorbed in the miracle of its creation.  
"How do we test it? More pebbles?"  
"No," Loki found his voice, shaky. He cleared it and continued. "We proceed like we did last time." Korg stood up and made to volunteer. "No, my mineralized friend. We need someone with less firm flesh first."

"Why? I know I'm not the best test subject, but I can at least confirm if this beautiful portal opens into a mountain or a pool of lava." He extended one craggy finger. "Let me try?" Loki conceded without a fight, nodding silently. Korg proceeded to probe the cultivated anomaly like a child with a pudding. His finger disappeared and when he retracted it seconds later, it appeared none the worse for wear. 

"Seems good," he muttered and without query or preamble, shoved his whole head into the silvery plane. Bruce gasped next to him, professional demeanor overcome for a moment before Korg's face reappeared, all smiles.

"I think we've got a winner, fellas," he declared. "It's a big cave. I think. There's some critters running about even."  
"No scary vast void of space or just open air or buried miles underwater?" Bruce questioned.  
"Nope, not that I can see. It's a big expanse like a cavern. Let me look again." Korg buried his head in the portal again and moments later returned. "Yep. The air is a bit smelly, but breathable all the same."

"Success!" Thor beamed, clapping his hands together and gripping Brunnhilde about her shoulders in excitement. "Shall we proceed, brother?" Loki was several shades more subdued, but shared the sentiment. Progress was progress, no matter his internal injuries.  
"Yes, and the quicker the better. This is an unnatural portal, I don't know how long it will remain stable. It could be minutes or seconds only."

"Sounds good to me. C'mon Miek!" The rock creature scooped up the group's collective hero in his arms, stepping through the portal without a glance back.  
"Good work, brother," Thor couldn't stop smiling and stepped through the portal as well. The valkyrie simply shrugged and followed him through. Forward momentum was better than stagnation. Even if it brought her closer to Asgard, it put her further away from Sakaar. She hoped.

"Loki," Bruce started weakly. They were alone now, the last two on this side of the portal.   
"Don't." The sorcerer turned his head and faced the portal. His throat was tight. This wasn't the time for asinine conversations.  
"No, I... I wanted to say I'm _really_ proud of you," he trailed off, clearing his throat before continuing. 

Proud? That's not what he desired. Pride was a professional sentiment, devoid of the connection he thought they shared. The connection he desired. Loki refused to turn and look at him, but Bruce continued anyway. 

"You did the right thing when we all needed it. Miek wouldn't have gotten there on his own. Thank you." And there was gratitude? It made sense, but the unfamiliar sentiment sat uncertainly on his bruised heart and his eyes scalded at the edges with frozen emotion. He wanted to scream, but restrained himself.

"And... for the record, I like the blue," Bruce murmured, only inches away now. "It suits you."  
"What?!" Loki spat angrily, turning around to confront this awful liar. But the honesty sat on Bruce's cheeks with a faint blush and any further words were stolen from his the demi-god's lips.

Bruce stretched up on his toes and brushed a warm and meaningful kiss against his cobalt neck, in the exact spot where he was most sensitive, shutting off all Loki's brain activity.  
"C'mon. Like you said, this portal isn't stable. I don't really want to be stuck here for the rest of my life..." the incomprehensible doctor grasped his frozen hand lightly and pulled Loki towards the portal.

The sorcerer's mind was a jumble of warring thoughts and emotions. He couldn't possibly reconcile the stabbing rejection he'd felt with the tenderness he'd just received. He forcibly shut all auxiliary thought down, pulling the core of cold into his body and gripping Bruce's unaccountably warm hand.

"After you," he offered and Bruce stepped through into the unknown. Loki promptly followed, not sparing a glance around the vacant white room that had devoured both his joy and his sorrow.

***

The ground was warm under his feet. Too warm. Loki pulled his cloak of ice back under the Asgardian glamour, feeling a measure better, but still sweating. He looked around. Luckily everyone was still alive and in one piece.

They had landed in a cave just as Korg had reported. Loki regretted not being able to close the portal from the other end but reasoned the anomaly didn't have long to live anyway before it evaporated back into the fabric of reality.

The more pressing matter at hand was figuring out where they were. And then tackling all the strange emotions that had boiled up from Bruce's reaction to seeing his Jotun flesh for the first time. Oh Bor, there wasn't time enough to pick that apart. All he knew was the doctor was still by his side and now sliding their palms together, fingers intertwining in reassurance as the mortal took in his third new realm in the space of a week. The confusion was dizzying.

"Where are we?" Bruce murmured, but no one answered. The cavern was expansive, nearly as large as the throne room in Asgard, with two primary dark tunnels leading away into the unknown. The room they were in was well-lit by the glow of open pools of molten rock. There were hardly any shadows.

Some small creatures dashed from one side of the chamber to the other. Just as Korg had mentioned. But they were not creatures at all. Loki knew in an instant what they were and where they had landed. He glanced at Thor and then Brunnhilde, and the same thought seemed to pass through all three.

"The good news," Loki started, "we are indeed closer to Asgard." He could hear Bruce audibly swallow beside him and prompted:   
"The bad news?"   
Loki couldn't help but smile, a sickly knowing smirk. Was familiar territory truly better than the great unknown?  
"Welcome to Hel."

  
***

  
"What's your conclusion, sir? Has the trail run cold?"

The squadron of armed troops stepped onto the white marble boulevard. This city, dormant for ages, had been recently awakened by a staggering amount of activity. He could feel the vibrations of ancient magic, freshly used, echoing from the empty buildings around his advance party. The flavor was only too familiar and made his teeth clench in anger.

"Not at all, my dear Topaz. They were here. Recently, too. We are very much on the right path."

  
***  
THE END  
***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have come to the end at last, my friends!  
> Will there be a part three? It certainly seems that way.  
> Plots are buzzing in my head, a solid way to end Bruce and Loki's long journey together.
> 
> Au revoir till then! Thank you for reading!


End file.
